Another bit of news from Tag is the RS2 Caliper chrono Ti2 running the Caliber 36 movement for 1/10th of a second accuracy. The 36 isn’t new – it appeared in 2008 – but the “caliper” system is quite interesting.
The dashboard is a stylish black 43mm dial designed for optimum readability and information. The spotlight feature is the exclusive Caliper Rotating Scale, an ingenious display mode marked by an oversize crown and red line at 10 o’clock that enables precise readings of 1/10th of a second — magnified 10X for rapid readability.
I have a weird video after the jump. → Read More
Apple stores are selling iPhones 3G without contracts, en masse, for $599 for 8GB and $699 for the 16GB. You can activate the phones in the privacy of your own home or, more importantly, you can downgrade the firmware and unlock them. → Read More
Earlier this evening we saw a new ad come out of the Microsoft hive mind showing Lauren, a charming everywoman, purchasing an HP laptop for $699 after finding that the lowest-priced Mac matching her meagre requirements would cost her nearly double. The resulting commercial is effective in these lean times but isn’t it a bit disingenuous? I’ve often spoken of the PC industry’s race to the bottom. A $699 laptop – along with a $200 LCD monitor – would have been unthinkable a few years ago but it is now commonplace. At that price, however, you get a machine that wouldn’t get a second look, spec for spec, a few years ago. These would have been called barebones machines – a little memory, a hard drive, and a processor are all you’d get. But with the advent of high design, it’s easy to put lipstick on that particular pig and make Lauren happy. → Read More
They’ve got a point on the cost to feature ratio of Macs v. Windows machines in this new Microsoft ad. I have to say, these things are getting a lot better over time. And the price difference is the key weak point in the Apple product lineup. Mac fanatics couldn’t care less. But to a recession-beaten regular computer user, this message is right on the money. “I’m just not cool enough to be a Mac person,” the actress says after visiting an Apple store and not finding any laptops in her price range.
See our coverage of other recent Microsoft ads here, here, here. → Read More
Digital certification platform MyID.is is taking a crack at offering a way for people to claim their real identity online, in order to be able to prevent ID theft and to verify content they publish on their blogs, social networking accounts, photo & video sharing sites, and so on.
Additionally, the site offers (yet another) way to manage your online identity and doubles as a certified OpenID provider. The site has been in alpha testing for the past 8 months and as of yesterday entered into public beta.
This is how it works: you register for a MyID.is Certified account on the website, and enter your personal details, which are later verified by the team (I’ll get to the issues with this later). They do this by cross-checking the name you submitted with the one on your credit card – they’ll charge a fee between $2 and $5 to verify that it is yours, similar to how Google checks your credit card details for an AdSense account – and by sending a 6-digit code to your postal address which you have to enter to verify your identity on their platform. → Read More
The Samsung SWD-M100 Mondi is the first Wimax device in the U.S. and hopes to pick up where Nokia’s Wimax tablet, now discontinued in the U.S., left off. → Read More
In his book Shaping Things, Bruce Sterling imagines a future where objects are tagged, tracked, and all tell their own stories. He calls these objects “spimes.” I read the book years ago, but it was the first thing I thought of when I visited SendMeHome.
The site is wacky but brilliant. It lets you register any object with a unique code, which is printed out on a small sticker that you place on the object. The object can be anything from your wallet or iPhone to a beloved frying pan. Ostensibly, the purpose of doing this is that if you should ever lose the object, anyone who finds it can contact you through SendMeHome. By entering the code on the sticker, they can learn anything you’ve decided to share about yourself or the object, and can contact you anonymously. SendMeHome offers this service for free, but charges $3.99 for a pack of stickers. (It doesn’t get involved in actually getting your item back to you).
The lost-and-found feature is the only practical reason you would use the service. But once you’ve attached a sticker to a favorite object and registered it on the site, there are other things you can do with it. You can tell a story about the object, pass it around, or put it on a mission. It is on its way to becoming a spime,. These spimes are “always associated with a story. . . . they are protagonists of a documented process,” as Sterling once described it. → Read More
Google is holding one of its occasional “Campfire One” events for developers on April 7. These events, which are held outside on the lawn at Google Headquarters, have always included big product announcements in the past. At a May 2008 Campfire One Google announced details of Friend Connect. A month before that, in April 2008, Google announced App Engine.
What will they announce this time? A good bet is Java on AppEngine, which we’d previously heard wouldn’t be announced until the I/O conference in May. But the product would be a good fit for Campfire One. Of course, it may also be something else entirely. We’ll attend (either because we’re invited or because we just show up) and live blog whatever it is that happens. → Read More
Everybody’s doing it. Even YouTube has succumbed to Twitter mania. Below every video if you click on the “Share” link you will find three options: MySpace, Facebook, and now Twitter. You can expand the box for even more sharing options, but those are the main three and Twitter was just recently added.
Clicking on the Twitter button opens a pop-up window that takes you to your Twitter account and fills in a Tweet telling your followers to “check out this video,” along with the title and URL. The URL is not shortened, but YouTube is working on that. (Youtube URLs are short anyway, so it is not a huge issue). Adding Twitter as one of the key sharing options is a no-brainer. Now, if they could actually embed the videos in the Twitter stream like you can on Facebook and MySpace, that would be something. → Read More
We just tried out OnLive, and of course it worked perfectly, being a demonstration on the order of 8-10 machines set up by the company itself. The people we talked to were naturally very optimistic, and my concerns over the availability and reliability of multi-megabit connections were waved away. That isn’t the only problem, though. OnLive will need a top-tier computer for every player at all times, and when a new game is introduced, the volume and subsequent will be unsupportable. Add this to the fact that video quality (which looked okay to me) is questionable at the framerates they’ve set forth, and things start looking a bit pie-in-the-sky. → Read More
We cover tech news here at TechCrunch, so I was surprised to see a 5 lb overnight shipment arrive from Pepsi containing three half liter bottles of Aquafina water. The reason for the special delivery? The company is launching a new plastic bottle that contains half the plastic content of the old bottles. Less plastic = less landfill weight, less carbon, less bad stuff in general, they say.
I’m concerned that Pepsi decided to promote its new “eco-friendly” product by proactively shipping, via Fedex overnight, 5 lb boxes of the water to press around the country. And then sending a second batch either in error or to reinforce the message. That’s not very eco-friendly (if anyone knows the carbon cost of sending these boxes, let me know, then multiply it by hundreds or thousands of press). It all seems a little wasteful.
Anyway, after all this carbon spending and the general effort involved in sending me six bottles of water I never requested, I thought I should at least put the product to the test. I don’t drink bottled water myself, since it’s less safe than tap water and way too expensive (see the clip from Bullshit below). But Laguna, my 105 lb chocolate lab, loves bottled water. And she loves to chew on stuff. So we brought her in for a special assignment to test Aquafina’s new Eco-fina water in the TechCrunch Lab. She reluctantly agreed. → Read More
There are whispers on the internet, originating from this forum post by a DirectShow developer. He can’t seem to find a way to make his codecs override those built into Windows. The “preferred codecs,” as they’re called, are written into write-protected registry values that can’t even be modified in administrator mode. That sure doesn’t sound right. → Read More
[Update: It's over!] Nintendo was generous enough to provide everyone at their press conference with a copy of Rhythm Heaven (Rizumu Tengoku), a game which is already very popular in Japan and they’re hoping will take off here, presumably with word of mouth from us folks. Of course, I don’t have a DS (I’m still working through the Dreamcast library), so one of you lucky ducks gets to keep my copy of this game — which I should mention isn’t due out for another 11 days. → Read More
Mafia types and limousine drivers take note: according to the latest California Air Resources Board report, dark and black cars could soon be verboten. Why? Because darker colors require heavier air conditioning usage, naturally.
A Mythbusters-type test is in order here but I suspect that the actual difference, internally and while in motion, between a white car and a black car is negligible and as anyone who has gotten into a hot car – any color hot car – that AC is going on ASAP anyway. → Read More
Here we have a GREAT idea in the “Stuff-Your-Stuff Theater Set” from Pottery Barn, an unfortunately-named piece of furniture with an even more unfortunate $1299 price tag. → Read More
While many people in the tech world only make the trek to Austin, Texas once a year for SXSW, the city has a fairly sizable startup community. Now Austin is getting its own Y Combinator-esque program, dubbed Capital Factory.
As with other similar programs, Capital Factory offers entrepreneurs a modest amount of funding in exchange for equity (the program is offering ‘up to $20,000′ in exchange for 5% of each startup). Capital Factory is also advertising ‘$20,000 in free stuff‘, which includes server usage, PR support, and legal help. But the real value from these programs comes from their associated mentors, who work with the startups to help them get on their feet, and help tap into their established networks of VCs and other entrepreneurs. → Read More
Google has cut 200 jobs in sales and marketing, a first for the search giant. According to VWag a tipster wrote:
A friend of mine in the San Francisco office’s AdWords division (who wants to remain nameless) was laid off this morning. She also said there were 200 people total. They are still on payroll for two months and have the opportunity to apply for other jobs within the company. If they don’t have another job at the end of the 60 days they get a severance package.
The CrunchGear mobile newswagon is parked in downtown San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference, and although this is a more industry-orientated show, we’ve managed to find some pretty interesting stuff — and of course, a few of the latest games. Check out some of the highlights inside. → Read More
