After 473 days of beta testing and many, many preliminary releases, the rich multimedia mobile browser Skyfire has just hit version 1.0. Though Skyfire’s biggest features (namely, its ability to handle formats like Flash and Silverlight) have been in since its early days, there’s enough polish and primp in this release to justify branding it with a whole number. → Read More
Some flexible AMOLED news for you. (I know, right?) Samsung just showed off a prototype 6.5-inch display that’s less of a hassle to produce in large quantities. (Temperature doesn’t need to be as closely monitored, manufacturing costs have dropped, etc.) Samsung envisages something like this being used in electronic book readers, electronic passports, etc. Paper be damned, I guess. → Read More
Well will you look at that — a base-level netbook has dipped below the $200 mark. That’s for a new unit, too, not a refurbished one. → Read More
In an effort to continue fostering the Android development community, Google has announced the second round of its Android Developer Challenge – a competition that rewards some of the platform’s best applications with large cash grants.
Google will begin accepting submissions from developers in August. In an interesting twist, Google is going to let anyone with an Android handset participate in the process, allowing them to vote using a special application available on the Android Marketplace. The voting application will randomly download applications from the pool of competitors, and users will be asked to rate them. These votes will determine the top 20 apps in 10 different categories (for a total of 200 apps), which will then move on to the next round. Users will be able to vote in the second round as well, but votes from Google judges will make up 55% of the final score. → Read More
In case you have seen the Japanese horror movie “The Ring” or its acceptable American remake, you already have a taste of what kind of person Koji Suzuki is. The guy didn’t have to do anything with the movies but authored the book of the same name.
Now, Suzuki is about to release a new horror story. The name: Drop. Nature of binding: None. It’s released as a toilet paper roll. Aptly named, I would say. The thing is seriously being marketed as “Japan’s creepiest toilet paper” and will be released over here on June 6. → Read More
Almost a year ago to the day, we announced that Tecmo Bowl would be making its triumphant return to the video game world with a Wii version of everyone’s favorite old school football game. Those hopes have now been dashed indefinitely. → Read More
TinyChat, the simple, free web-based chat room we wrote about here, is now adding video conferencing and screen sharing to its list of features.
Once you create a chat room on TinyChat’s site, TinyChat will generate a unique URL that you can share with whoever you choose to invite to the virtual chat room. When users click on the link, they will enter the interface and will be able to input messages, change their usernames and enable video and audio conferencing. Powered by Adobe Flash, the video conferencing feature allows up to 12 different users in the chat room. TinyChat also lets you share any type of file with other members of a chat room. Similar to the site’s previous version, you can embed a badge on other sites and forums to spread the link to the chatroom. The video conferencing feature is very easy to use and the quality of the video isn’t terrible. → Read More
From downloading videos and high-resolution photos, to online gaming and chatting with friends over instant-messengers, the mobile broadband networks of today are strong – but they’re starting to feel ancient. Today, AT&T clarified their plans to upgrade their network to deliver considerably faster mobile broadband speeds by way of HSPA (High Speed Packet Access). HSPA roll outs will begin later this year, firing up in full sometime in 2011. → Read More
Not since Apple stunned a developer/media crowd by giving away free iSight video cameras has a company gone to the heart of what Jonathan Schwartz calls the tendency of not just software but hardware to trend to free. Google’s giveaway of 4,000 Android phones and 30 days of 3G answers the musical question: is that an Android phone in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? Google’s HTML 5 pitch got a whole lot more interesting when developers realized the company was moving into the kind of viral marketing Apple seemed to own until recently. The App Store has created an always-on version of the developer evangelism connection, and we’ll see how effective Google is in building on the momentum created by the phone toolkit. The iPhone 3.0 release continues to keep Apple ahead in lining developer pockets with money through increased monetization scenarios. Now the differentiator will come on the media side of the equation. Google has maintained good relationships with both mainstream and blogger press, but free phones will need to be backed up with the only coin media respects, namely access. Tim O’Reilly released a wrap-up post that quoted several of the keynoters before they actually delivered those remarks. Scoops are scoops, but this takes the concept of live blogging a step further. But that kind of media sequencing is not how Apple turned the press into a subsidiary. Instead, they did it by capturing the imagination of the bit-stained wretches. As users, we’ve accepted years of incremental development – the long evolution of Windows from a band-aid on top of DOS to NT to something indistinguishable from most of OS/10. Then the browser – from a crippled container firewalled off from Office to an iteratively updated application framework that, with HTML 5, makes Java an irrelevant stub on the desktop and Flash in big trouble on the phone. Today’s free phone is the razor for creating the HTML 5 habit, and video is the nicotine. Battery life will continue to be the great leveler here, but even that bolsters the free phone as a backup when the iPhone dies, or vice versa. As planes adopt WiFi, I’ll use my MacBook Air as a charging station, and switch between the smaller devices for as much of the communications time as I can lay off. Streaming video servers will become the gas stations of the → Read More
Today during its keynote address during Google I/O, Google showed off its Latitude location-based service running on the iPhone. This is notable because so far, Latitude hasn’t been available on the huge popular smartphone. Instead, not surprisingly, Google opted to focus on getting it running on Android. But it’s coming, soon, with the launch of the iPhone 3.0 software this summer.
But also interesting is that the reason Google has been waiting for the 3.0 software is because it’s not actually creating a native iPhone app for Latitude — as all other location-based services on the iPhone are — instead it’s using the Safari web browser to run Latitude. Thanks to HTML 5, Safari will be able to access a user’s location information and Latitude will be able to access that as well (provided the user gives permission). This will put it on par with what Google is doing in its browser for Android. → Read More
UPDATE: Please see after the jump for the archived video at the end of this post. The TechCrunch Europe Roundtable event in Stockholm today (live video streamed below and on @TCEurope on Twitter, official hashtag is #tcen) will feature an afternoon of panel discussions and presentations followed by startup pitches and a great networking reception. TechCrunchTalk Nordic will be exploring the Nordic and Baltic tech scene – which produced amazing companies like Skype and, more recently, Spotify (not to mention the likes of Ericsson, Nokia and many other huge tech companies). Check out our full schedule and speakers here. We’ll be covering several topics such as the interchange between Nordic and Baltic startups, VC investment in the region, and the next wave of innovations that will come from this area. TechCrunchTalk Nordic is sponsored by Bloglovin and Sunstone Capital. Our event partners include: ArcticStartup, Swedish Startups, The Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship and Scandinavian Web Developer Conference 2009 . Our streaming video partner is Bambuser. Our live streaming video will appear below shortly (from 3pm Stockholm time, 2pm London, 9am New York and 6am San Francisco): TechCrunchTalk Nordic is sponsored by: Bloglovin’ Bloglovin‘ helps you to keep track of your favorite blogs. We notify our members every time one of their favourite blogs have written something new. Founded by an international team with more than 200 years of combined entrepreneurial, operational and investment experience, Sunstone Capital A/S is a leading Nordic venture capital investor headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark. With over €400 million in funds under management, Sunstone Capital focuses on developing and expanding early-stage Technology and Life Science companies with potential to achieve global success in their markets. www.sunstonecapital.com TechCrunchTalk Nordic media and event partners include: ArcticStartup ArcticStartup held its 6th pan-regional event taking place in Stockholm on 2nd April. The evening’s theme was startups and the future of mobile. Event’s high level panelists included Morris Packer of the Bonnier Group, Teemu Kurppa of Huikea (Formerly Jaiku/Google) and Gustav Söderström of Spotify. ArcticEvenings bring entrepreneurs together across the arctic region to discuss new ideas, experiences, challenges and developments and above all share knowledge and make those important connections in the Nordic and Baltic startup community. You can find out all about the event here http://www.arcticstartup.com/arcticevening-2nd-of-april-stockholm-sweden/ Swedish Startups Swedish Startups is Sweden’s biggest community for Swedish web-entrepreneurs, developers and VC’s. We make it easier for you to keep track of events and → Read More
Look, I’m not even going to pretend to know anything about the current hip-hop scene, so I’ll keep my opinion about Scratch: The Ultimate DJ to myself. That said, I can look at the game’s controller and say, yeah, that doesn’t look too shabby at all. → Read More
The TwoNav Aventura is a GPS device with a twist. The $900 device lets you input your own maps using vector and raster imagery, allowing you to turn the topography of Scranton into a fairy land of joy and wonder. It’s Europe-only right now and you can buy them in single country or Western European models. → Read More
Videoplaza, effectively an adserver for online video, has signed a deal with four of Denmark largest print publishers. Many of these sites concerned have served web video for some time – Denmark generally was an early proponent of broadband networks so the population is highly wired-up. But the news is significant because few online media owners have done much in the way of more sophisticated online video advertising like pre-roll and overlays. The publishers involved are Berlingske Media, Ekstra Bladet, Jyllands Posten and Børsen. At the same time four major advertisers in the region, De Gule Sider, Nordisk Film, Nykredit and Nordic airline SAS are joinging the project. The publishers will use Videoplaza’s Monetizer product to manage, serve and track the ads for an initial three month long project. The move has come after Videoplaza decided to look further abroad than its home market of Sweden towards Norway, Finland and Denmark. In Denmark they found that media owners and agencies were a less sophisticated market in terms of online video (though not much else I dare say). Videoplaza’s CEO is Sorosh Tavakoli, who is one of the panellist at TechCrunchTalk Stockholm today. → Read More
We’ve all heard of “sexting,” when teens send nude photos of themselves to each other via text message (well, MMS). Schools don’t like it, parents don’t like it, but, apparently, it’s all the rage among young people these days. Well, it turns out that sexting really isn’t that big of a deal; it’s merely a continuation of the age-old tradition of “exploration” and all that. A 2009 version of spin the bottle, if you will. → Read More
During today’s Google I/O keynote, the company unveiled a new set of widgets collectively called Web Elements that are sure to spread across the web like wildfire. The widgets allow users to quickly integrate some of Google’s most popular products, including Calendar, Search, and Maps, directly into their sites with a minimal amount of effort. Much of the same functionality has previously been available through Google APIs (in fact, some of these widgets were built on them), but most bloggers haven’t known how to use them before now. Google Web Elements makes the process much easier – just copy and paste an embed code, and you’re done.
Perhaps the most interesting widget is the ‘Conversation’ Element, which allows visitors to your site to post comments and videos, similar to the way they could using a FriendFeed embed. Site owners have the option of restricting these conversations to their sites, or to share them as global conversations through Google Friend Connect. You can check out a sample embed below. → Read More
Zensify is a new lifestreaming iPhone app which lets you update, discover and track pictures, videos and comments across multiple social networks. Other apps have tried to do similar things. But what sets Zensify apart is that it shows the user trends within your social graph in the form of a tag cloud of key words. In other words it brings a lot more intelligence to your social graph. Suddenly, you can see a big trending topic amongst people you follow. I’ve been wanting something similar for a while and I’m not alone. David Winer recently Tweeted: “Wouldn’t it be cool if “trending topics” were localized to the people who are followed by the people you follow.” Well Zensify does this. → Read More
Today at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco, Vic Gundotra, the VP Engineering for Google has a special surprise saved for the end of the show: A free HTC Magic (aka the G2) for everyone in the audience. Not only that but it comes with a SIM card with unlimited 3G access and talk time for 30 days. As Gundotra joked, he always wanted to have an “Oprah moment.”
I would have preferred a free car, but I suppose this will do. Though I do worry that Google seems to love to give these G1s away (see update). But this seems like a better deal.
Update: I previously stated it would be a G1, but it turns out, Google is giving away an HTC Magic, aka the G2 — forget everything nasty I said. Nothing but Google love for this move. → Read More
