I was wrong, way wrong. I stated that a team of drivers, including hypermiller Wayne Gerdes and NASCAR driver Carl Edwards, could not drive a 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid over 1,000 miles on a single tank of gas. But the team ticked over the 1,000 mark with a 1/3 tank of gas left and proceed to drive an extra 445.7 miles. In all, the drive was 47 hours of continuous driving done by an entire team of people.
The stunt concluded yesterday morning with Edwards hit the 1,000 mark himself. Thankfully, this car ride didn’t end like the Sprint Cup race at Talladega just last Sunday. Then again, the speeds were a bit slower on this drive. → Read More
Nearly a month after we dabbled with these two iPhone Google Voice solutions, VoiceCentral and GV Mobile have finally made it through Apple’s torture chambers and onto the e-shelves of the App Store. While we haven’t spent enough time with either post-release to recommend one over the other, we can say that VoiceCentral has gone and fixed every qualm we had with it in its early days. The UI has been polished, SMS support has been added, a History screen is now available, and you can choose which screen to show on start up. Both apps go for $2.99, and are now pretty much neck-and-neck as far as features (with a few perks exclusive to each app). At this point, which one would suit you better seems like a matter of personal preference. VoiceCentral iTunes Link GV Mobile iTunes Link → Read More
The Lange 1 Time Zone is a beautiful multi-timezone piece made by A. Lange and Söhne (pronounced “A Langa and Zunna”) that shows multiple timezones around its inside bezel. Most interestingly, however, are how they are handling Hugo Chavez’ delightful new time zone, UTC-4:30, which was introduced to allow for more sunlight in Chavez’s benighted land. → Read More
A fascinating bit of Apple gossip for your Tuesday morning, gossip that piggybacks on the never-going-to-die “iPhone on Verizon Wireless?” rumor. Does an “iPhone lite” interest you? Or perhaps a “media pad that would let users listen to music, view photos, and watch high-definition videos” that makes calls using Wi-Fi? → Read More
TrueCar, an information service launched at TechCrunch50 that aims to give potential new car buyers an idea of what the price tag of the vehicle they’re considering purchasing should really be reading, is officially launching its free consumer-focused website today by taking the beta label off.
In essence, the service allows car buyers to check if the price for their next car is on par with the price others have paid for the same vehicle in the past, hopefully bringing some transparency to the automotive retail industry. → Read More
Bam! It’s official, folks: the second Android phone to go to a major carrier is now hittin’ the hands of consumers. Vodafone launched the HTC Magic a few days ahead of schedule in a few countries yesterday, and it looks like the first units are starting to arrive. Sascha of Mini-PC-Pro managed to scrounge one up, and has given it the customary strip-down. Everything within those little walls of red is fairly standard: the normal papers (warranty info, device ID numbers), a headset, a little slip-cover case (which feels “cheap”, says Sascha), headset, powerbrick, and, of course, the Magic. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like they included a HTC-Port-to-3.5mm headset adaptor – so if you want to use your own earbuds, you best hit up eBay before you order the device. [Via AndroidCommunity] → Read More
Oh my, take a look at this feat of ingenuity. Anyone who plays Rock Band or Guitar Hero World Tour and lives in a smallish apartment will appreciate how difficult it is to store the controllers without making them permanent fixtures in one of the rooms you use on a daily basis. → Read More
Microstock photo site Fotolia has just launched its video offering. Back in February, when the service reached one million registered users, the company indicated that the launch of its video service would come soon, and now it is here.
Fotolia is launching with 10,000 royalty free video clips that can be used in video ads, on Websites, mobile animations, and more. These are generic 5 to 60 second clips which can be used as filler, background or for transitional moments. The costs vary but they start at around $10. Competitor iStockPhoto has offered stock video for years and recently expanded to audio. → Read More
Way, way, way, way, way back in January of this year we took a look at a clock adorned with Star Wars vehicles that was being sold on Etsy.com. If you saw the clock and hoped against hope for a Star Trek version, your (space) ship has finally come in. → Read More
Hulu CEO Jason Kilar sits down with Sarah Lacy on Yahoo Tech Ticker. The first and second segments are now up.
In the first segment, in response to Lacy’s question about why Hulu removed its content from the popular Boxee service, he talks about his need to juggle the needs of his three customers – networks, viewers and advertisers. The networks must be kept happy to make sure Hulu is around for the long term, he says, and this move was made to keep the networks happy. Kilar also addressed rumors of NBC pulling out of the joint venture.
Kilar talks about Hulu’s business model in the second segment. He won’t disclose revenue but says the company is ahead of plan. Analysts say the company may have made as much as $65 million last year on the back of advertising that sells at much higher rates than YouTube commands. → Read More
Zoho, the creators of a web-based software suite made up of document, project and invoicing management tools, has launched the availability of its comprehensive webtop productivity products on mobile devices.
Zoho previously had basic mobile support for its applications on iPhone and some limited capability on Windows Mobile but now fully integrates Zoho Applications with several mobile devices. Zoho Mail, Calendar, Writer, Sheet, Show & Creator are now available for the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, WindowsMobile and Symbian devices. → Read More
You guys like your Babylon 5, do ya? Today only, you can get the whole series on DVD for just over a hundred bucks. That’s 30 discs in all, spread out over five seasons equalling 80+ hours of content. → Read More
As more mobile phones become full-fledged Web-browsing devices, a small but fast-growing segment of all visitors to any given Websites will be mobile. But with so many different mobile phones and browsers, it is difficult to figure out where most of that mobile traffic is coming from. A new mobile Website tracking service called PercentMobile lets you track mobile visitors by device, cell phone operator, country, and more. All you do is insert one line of pixel-based code into the header of your Website and it does the rest. All mobile browsers can read the pixel code, unlike the Javascript required by Google Analytics, for instance.
PercentMobile is in private beta, but we have 500 invites for TechCrunch readers. Use the code freecoffee at signup. → Read More
Parked.com, a company that specializes in monetizing – you guessed it – parked domain names, has acquired WhyPark, a 3-year old startup based in Willoughby, OH that provides domain name owners with tools to attract traffic to the web addresses with simple, user-made sites as well as tools to manage their portfolio and buy and sell domains on a virtual marketplace. The terms of the acquisition remain undisclosed.
WhyPark essentially allows domain owners to trade in the usual advertisement-filled landing pages that are so common with parking providers for content-driven websites that are supposed to draw organic traffic from search engines (scary line alert: “populate your sites with fresh content daily, without lifting a finger”). WhyPark also allowed users to monetize their sites in a variety of ways, a service that directly competed with Parked.com’s core business. → Read More
We haven’t actually seen the details of it since a first look was given exclusively to the New York Times, but there’s a new Compete report coming out supposedly later today that claims only 27% of iPhone owners primarily use their device primarily for work-related needs compared to 59% of owners with other types of smartphones (HTC, Blackberry, Nokia, etc.).
The NY Times reporter didn’t detail where these stats are coming from and how Compete reached their conclusions exactly apart from saying ‘smartphone users were surveyed’, but I consider the article’s headline (“Apple iPhone Owners Don’t Use It For Work”) to be quite misleading either way you spin it. (Update: the headline has since changed to something more accurate). If you have a Web-capable phone, you are going to use it for both work and play. Or does every person with a job who owns an iPhone also keep a Blackberry handy to whip out for work-related tasks (besides Erick)? → Read More
Zoho, the creators of a web-based software suite made up of document, project and invoicing management tools, has launched the availability of its comprehensive webtop productivity products on mobile devices.
Zoho previously had basic mobile support for its applications on iPhone and some limited capability on Windows Mobile but now fully integrates Zoho Applications with several mobile devices. Zoho Mail, Calendar, Writer, Sheet, Show & Creator are now available for the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, WindowsMobile and Symbian devices. → Read More
Mint, the popular personal finance site that won 2007′s TechCrunch40, is launching a new feature called “Financial Fitness” which, strange as it may sound, adds an element of gaming to the service. Yes, it may sound like a bizarre combination at first – personal finance and fun aren’t exactly two things that go hand in hand. But it’s also a smart move on Mint’s part, as it looks to turn the mundane and often confusing activity of getting your financial affairs in order into something a bit more tolerable while increasing Mint’s engagement in the process. Mint is running the new feature in a private beta for a few weeks, and the first 500 TechCrunch readers to Email techcrunch-getfit@mint.com with the Email address they use on Mint.com will gain access.
The game itself is fairly simple. It outlines five main principles that users should focus on on the road to financial fitness, including ‘spend less than you earn’, ‘manage credit and debt wisely’, and so on. Each of these core principles has a number of tasks associated with it, like ‘Avoid Bank Fees’ and ‘Come in under budget’. As you complete tasks, you are rewarded with points. Over time, you can earn merit badges for completing more difficult tasks, like being named as a “Financial Guru” for maintaining a 100% health status for an extended period of time. And then there’s the more tangible bonus of likely having more money than you started with. → Read More
A couple weeks ago, I spotted the reincarnation of Socialthing on AOL’s country-music Website TheBoot and speculated that it would potentially be rolled out across AOL’s other MediaGlow properties as well. Today, a press release from AOL in my inbox confirms that MediaGlow “is in the process of deploying Socialthing across its network of more than 75 sites.”
Socialthing started out as a Friendfeed competitor when AOL bought it last year. It never came out of private beta, but its lifestreaming service found its way into Bebo, the social network AOL purchased for $850 million. Now, with Socialthing for Websites, AOL is combining it with AIM to compete with Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect. As I wrote in my last post, Socialthing for Websites offers a single sign-in for participating Websites. Right now it accepts your AIM or AOL username and password, but will soon add Bebo, Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo and OpenID using OAuth. → Read More
TrueCar, an information service launched at TechCrunch50 that aims to give potential new car buyers an idea of what the price tag of the vehicle they’re considering purchasing should really be reading, is officially launching its free consumer-focused website today by taking the beta label off.
In essence, the service allows car buyers to check if the price for their next car is on par with the price others have paid for the same vehicle in the past, hopefully bringing some transparency to the automotive retail industry. → Read More
