Navigon pulled out of the US market just a little bit ago and took a whole product line with them. That doesn’t mean that the company is done completely though. The 7310 was just announced and it looks alright. → Read More
I caught up with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone today on video (after the jump) at the AllThingsD conference to ask him what business models might emerge for the company. In the video above, he talks about different things Twitter can do to help marketers connect with consumers, such as selling verified accounts (something he mentioned onstage last night). But there is is a broader approach which he also hinted at last night:
There’s a way to make introductions to people, to tell them that things and people are available on Twitter, and there’s certainly money in that.
Making introductions is one way to put it. Selling followers is another. → Read More
Yelp’s having a bad day. It may not be as bad as the day iMindi is having, who managed to delete all their user accounts, but it’s still a doozy.
Yelp managed to pair a normally non-offensive headline in a newsletter article about biking (“Put the Fun Between Your Legs”) with a noble sponsor (SF Women Against Rape) to create one heck of an offensive and awkward situation. Apart, those words are fine. Put them together and people go nuts.
The title has been changed to “Corrected: A Bicycle Built For Yelp!” along with a message “Due to an editorial oversight, an earlier version of the Weekly Yelp contained a headline that was inappropriate for the context. We apologize for the mistake.” They’re also apologizing on Twitter, where the newsletter became quite the topic of conversation. → Read More
Nearly everyone around the TechCrunch office is a Mac user, and we’ve been waiting rather impatiently for Google to port over its Chrome browser since its debut (for Windows only) last September. Google has been pretty quiet on when a Mac version might come out, and with Google’s I/O event this week we thought that there might be a chance that the search giant would finally release Chrome for Mac during one of its two keynotes.
Today’s keynote was a swing and a miss – we learned about Google’s web elements, new application features using HTML 5, and everyone in the audience got a shiny new GTC phone. But Chrome for Mac was nowhere to be soon. Should we expect more tomorrow?
TechCrunch IT Editor Steve Gillmor caught up with Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and asked when we could expect Google Chrome for the Mac. Brin’s response? “I ask about that every other day.” → Read More
The mousepad in general doesn’t get a lot of attention, but it is an important part of your desk or gaming environment. Some people prefer gel mats, some prefer ergonomically-shaped ones, some prefer built-in wrist-rests, and some prefer flat ones. That last group will love this new Razer Sphex (?!), which the company claims is the world’s thinnest gaming-grade mousepad. Of course, gaming-grade isn’t exactly a federally-regulated moniker; companies like Razer and SteelSeries have pretty much made it up out of nothing. Still, I’ve used both their mousepads and they’re better than the ones I used to get from Target. → Read More
After learning that everyone who attended the Google I/O conference was getting a free Android phone, were you upset that you weren’t here? Well I have good news. But it will cost you.
The Google Ion (aka the HTC Magic or the “G2″) that was given to everyone who attended the Google I/O conference today is already available on eBay. Quite frankly, I’m shocked that it seemed to take an hour for this to happen. → Read More
This Sparkfun project by Nate creates a keyless entry fob for a Mazda using a Nike+iPod kit, allowing you to leave your car keys at home. Using a serial board you can read the input and output bits of the footpod and grab signals and decode them. → Read More
Memorial Day has come and gone, which means that aside from an abundance of family cookouts, many swimming pools have officially opened their doors for the summer swimming season. I love swimming, and I enjoy swimming laps for exercise. Unfortunately, it’s mind numbingly boring to swim back and forth. I’ve long wanted a waterproof MP3 player to liven up my swimming. Enter the Finis SwiMP3. Read on for a full review. → Read More
Ahoy hoy, Bionic Commando fans. Capcom just passed this along to us and we wanted to let you know that starting today you can download Bionic Commando: Rearmed for half price on XBLA. It’s now 400MS points and the deal runs until June 3rd, so you’d better hurry. → Read More
What do you get when a Kaossilator and a Chumby mate? How about the Thingamagoop from Bleep Labs? This little bugger has an LED, a photo-resistor, and some knobs and it makes a lot of noise. What kind of noise? Noise-rock noise, which could put a damper on my plans to add this to the woodwind section in the orchestra playing my new opus, the iPhone Sonata in D Minor.
The website has a collection of sample sounds to show you what this thing is capable of which, it turns out, is a series of piercing squawks. → Read More
You saw the leaks, you read the announcement last night, and now you know when this sucker will be touchable for real. E3 will see the ZuneHD in all its glory, and we’ll be there to cover it for sure. Even if I have to tear myself away from the Dark Knight or Project Trico, I’ll get you guys some solid video of this long-awaited update to the Zune family. → Read More
We just took delivery of Acer’s first Windows Home Server, the Acer easyStore H340. So far, so good. The machine is heavy and well made. It feels just as good as HP’s EX series. I am thinking that HP’s might have better cooling with a Mac Pro-type front, but we’ll run some tests and see if temperature is even an issue with the Acer. Hopefully this machine preforms as well as it looks.
If it does, HP has a problem as this 1TB WHS is only $399 verses the $647 post rebate price for its EX487 1.5TB model. That’s a big difference and it doesn’t matter how much extra software HP is loading on it. Price and storage is the most important selling points on these servers.
Anyway, click through for a gallery of unboxing pics. → Read More
During a Q&A session in the press room following the Google I/O keynote today, Googler co-founder Sergey Brin made a surprise appearance and fielded some questions. One of them was about his thoughts on the name Bing, the supposed name of Microsoft’s new search engine.
Brin said he didn’t know enough about it to give a suggestion, but that Google is “pretty happy” with the name it chose, which drew laughs. He then goes a bit more into the name. Watch the video below. → Read More
Pah! Cupcake. Any true sweets connoisseur knows that the cupcake is at the bottom of the dessert totem pole, only ranking above those nasty red/white mints they chuck in alongside your bill. We’d take a delicious, engulfed-in-glaze donut over a cupcake any day – and so would Google. At today’s Google I/O conference, Google gave folks in the audience a sneak peak at Android 2.0, which they’ve aptly named “Donut”. It’s still fairly early in development, but they’ve already nailed out a few features that look pretty damn delicious. The new stuff on display: Android Search: Like the iPhone 3.0 software, Donut will be able to search across all local files. Unlike the iPhone OS, however, Android Search will be able to jump online at the touch of a button. (The Pre will be able to do local/online search as well – so we’d imagine that Apple’s already cracking away at squeezing in a websearch button) Text-to-speech API: Google has had text-to-speech in their own Android widgets for some time now. Donut will open up the text-to-speech APIs to all, allowing third party devs to roll it into their own apps. According to Google, it should play friendly with plenty of voices and accents Google also plans to open up a bunch of other new APIs with Donut, though they’re remaining mum for today. We expect to hear more about those in tomorrow’s keynote. → Read More
Heyzap, the Y Combinator startup that’s looking to become a “YouTube For Flash Games“, has closed a seed funding round led by Union Square Ventures, with independent investors Naval Ravikant (Hitforge) and Joshua Schachter (delicious) also participating. The exact size of the round was not disclosed, but it was “above $500k and less than $1 million”.
Rather than focus on building a portal, Heyzap offers a widget that includes a catalog of 12,000 games that site owners can quickly integrate into their sites. A major part of the company’s strategy lies in partnering with major online publishers to embed the widget, and it sounds like they’re seeing some success – Current features it in the site’s gaming section, and Cooliris is a partner as well. Heyzap generates revenue through advertising embedded in the widgets (most of which is served by Mochi Media). → Read More
Users beware – if you try out a brand new service in private beta, don’t get too upset when everything goes wrong.
On Monday we wrote about iMindi, a new startup that first showed its stuff at TechCrunch50 in 2008. In the post on Monday we gave out 1,000 private beta invites, which were apparently snatched up quickly.
Then, disaster. The email iMindi sent out, which contains the dreaded phrase “we accidentally deleted all the user accounts” sort of says it all. Brave souls can start all over again here. I know there are at least a few of you out there that are quite willing to forgive and forget.
Here’s the email: → Read More
With a handful of beta K-7s in the wild, sample images and videos are starting to trickle in from various parts of the world, including Korea, China, Russia, Germany and even my home state of Oregon. I suggest viewing the originals rather than the compressed versions that I’ve used in the post. → Read More
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
