I just came back from the official pre-launch event for the iPhone 3GS in Japan, organized by telecommunications giant SoftBank (the exclusive carrier in Nippon). The iPhone is often said to be rather unpopular in this country (which isn’t true), but even though the event began at 10 in the night, it was totally packed. → Read More
The adoption cycle for Twitter is a bit strange. It goes something like this: Ever-increasing waves of hype, links, and attention bring in the newbies to Twitter.com where they get their first taste of Twitterdom. Some portion of those set up an account out of curiosity or a fear of being left behind. They try sending out a few Tweets, look around, get bored by the initial banality of the service and abandon it for other pursuits.
But that is not the end of it. A lot of them come back, either because they keep getting links from friends or keep hearing about it on TV or whatever, and then they slowly start to see the usefulness—a funny Tweet from a friend, a link to breaking news, a way to keep an eye on the general zeitgeist. Twitter is the kind of thing that is easier to experience than it is to explain. But it is an acquired taste and often requires repeated exposure before people get hooked. Once they do get hooked, there is no going back. → Read More
This morning Google Voice was featured in a segment on the Today Show, during which NBC News correspondent Janet Shamlian outlined her experiences with the service over the last few months (her verdict: she loves it). It’s an interesting piece to watch if only to see how the mass media is trying to describe Google Voice without confusing everyone watching, which can be a difficult task.
Shamlian and Matt Lauer briefly address the potential privacy concerns that have been raised over Voice, which would give Google access to your voice conversations and voicemail. Given that many of us have already used Gmail for years, handing over sensitive data to Google isn’t exactly novel, but it’s a valid point nonetheless. That said, the Today Show piece entirely neglects the other real challenges facing Voice at this point: it requires you to start using a new telephone number (unless you wait it out until number portability) and the numbers shown by your outbound calls can be different from the ones your friends have, which can lead to confusion. → Read More
The tech blogosphere was abuzz yesterday with the news that Apple seemingly started accepting applications that contain nudity into the App Store. Now, it appears someone over at Cupertino as ultimately decided to reject the first such app to get into the store after all. In our tests, we could still locate the app via the iTunes link, but were unable to purchase it and download it to our devices. → Read More
The tech blogosphere was abuzz yesterday with the news that Apple seemingly started accepting applications that contain nudity into the App Store. Now, it appears someone over at Cupertino as ultimately decided to reject the first such app to get into the store after all. In our tests, we could still locate the app via the iTunes link, but were unable to purchase it and download it to our devices.
Other applications with the new rating (“Rated 17+ for “Frequent/Intense Sexual Content or Nudity.”) could still be downloaded without a problem, so it seems Apple just let ‘Hottest Girls’ slip through the cracks – something we suggested as a possibility yesterday as well – and has now fixed it. → Read More
GROU.PS, a do-it-yourself social network focused on moderated online collaboration, has raised $1 million in an extended Series A round of funding from Golden Horn Ventures. The company previously raised $1.1 million in Series A funding from Golden Horn in 2008.
GROU.PS currently has 1 million registered members and 40,000 social networks on the platform. The DIY social network is growing fast; the platform has grown from 200,000 users to 1 million members within a year. → Read More
The internet is filled to the brim with hubbub about Apple approving bare breasts in the App Store. Some cry for others to think of the children, others support the loosening of Apple’s grip on application content, and the rest all shrug it off with the rightly answer of “Who gives a damn?” We want to know, dear reader: if you’re a-okay with people doin’ the nasty in a few apps, what’s the limit? Is there one? Let us know in the poll below, then weigh in down in the comments. → Read More
Team Fortress 2 has a huge following. And it should. It rocks. But it might be getting a tad stale to those that play it hours everyday. (me) That’s why developers crank out killer mods like these two. The video above (might be NSFW – lots of up-skirt, panty shots) shows a nearly completed female Scout mod that will soon have everything from custom taunts to an appropriate voice. The video after the jump shows Sleuth, a clever mod available on www.team-viper.com servers where a spy can turn into a dispenser or sentry gun. Now where is that petition to have Valve release these officially… → Read More
Glubble, social network for families, is launching several new features to improve photo sharing within its social network for families. Formerly a Firefox plug-in that let parents control what websites kids could visit online, Glubble evolved into a social network that resembles a FriendFeed but for families. Glubble has also raised $1 million in Series B funding from European investors, bringing the site’s total funding to $4 million.
Glubble lets families set up a private family home page where they can leave messages on the message wall, create online photo albums and organize their familyʼs schedule using the family events feature to post appointment, birthdays, holidays and reminders. → Read More
Vizio just took the wraps off of its hot Internet-connected HDTVs the other day, but the company has a new Blu-ray player coming soon too. The $188 MSRP will probably get price cuts and sales to bring it down to a more “Walmart” level seeing as Blu-ray players have breached the $100 mark. But even around the starting price, this player might not disappoint. → Read More
With a nice big 3.2″ touchscreen, 5 megapixel camera, and 624mhz CPU, the Samsung Omnia wasn’t a bad piece of hardware when it was released last year. Hell, it still outspecs most phones released today. Hardware-wise, it’s set – but on the software front, it’s luke-warm garbage. The TouchWiz interface helps a little, but deep down inside it’s still clunky ol’ Windows Mobile 6.1. Well, a handful of handy hackers might soon fix the Omnia’s software. How? Android! It’s still in an early (read: not working) stage, but they’ve managed to get it to start up and provide some basic level of functionality. Best part? You don’t even need to flash your handset; they’ve got it running right off the SD card. If they manage to knock out some of the kinks and blast out a few drivers for the device, this could get really interesting. Keep up the good work, guys. [Patrick Soon via Android Community] → Read More
If you live in one of those houses where making a call on your AT&T phone requires standing in a specific corner, knocking three times, and saying a short prayer, you were probably pretty jazzed to hear about MicroCell, AT&T’s broadband-powered cell tower for your living room. When we discovered mentions of the MicroCell in an iPhone update, you probably got outright excited. It seemed like it was just weeks away from launch. That was February. 4 months later, AT&T has still been mostly mum on the matter – until now. Unstrung caught AT&T network delivery honcho Gordon Mansfield talking up the MicroCell, saying it’s “on track for a full national launch by the end of 2009.” A window of six months? Pah! That’s like a lifetime in the mobile world. There will be 14 new iPhones released by then! So don’t worry, folks – by the time you have a flying car and a broadband connection in said flying car, you’ll be able to pick up a MicroCell to go along with it. → Read More
With all the chatter about Yahoo’s impending roll-out of a completely overhauled brand – see Techmeme for more – this particular tip that landed in our inbox last night definitely caught our attention.
TechCrunch reader Bradley Scott Shoemaker checks in with us to tell us this new Yahoo homepage turned up when visiting the portal using Google’s Chrome browser. All his other installed browsers still showed the classic Yahoo website, which lead him to believe they’re gradually bucket testing the new redesign for now (update: some users reported seeing it for over a month already). → Read More
According to pocket-lint, HTC CEO Peter Chou has confirmed that the HTC Sense interface will be available as an optional addition to “other existing [HTC] devices.” Though he did not detail which phones would receive the addition and when, it isn’t hard to extrapolate. There are only a few other HTC phones running on Android, though each has a few variants: the HTC Dream, otherwise known as the T-Mobile G1, and the HTC Magic, known as the myTouch, ION, etc. Speaking of variants: From what we’ve heard from our talks with HTC, it seems a bit unlikely that Sense will find its way to any “with Google”-branded handsets – at least not in any official manner. That means the T-Mobile G1/myTouch are out, but the ION and another other handsets lacking the “with Google” subtitle are in. Cross your fingers, HTC fans, your phone may get a facelift soon. → Read More
Wait, what? There’s pornography on the Internet? When did this happen? It must be, like, a new thing, otherwise I cannot understand the curiosity over a newly updated iPhone app called “Hottest Girls”. It’s $1.99, and includes pictures of women, some of whom are topless. It’s almost like living in Europe, where topless women can be found on magazine covers and advertisements. → Read More
Opera, the Norwegian software company behind mobile browser Opera Mini, has released its latest State of the Mobile Web report, providing some interesting data points for a detailed look at the evolution of Web browsing on mobile phones.
Looking at global trends, Opera Mini’s nearly 25.4 million users (as measured in May 2009, up 8.4% from the month before and up 36% compared to May 2008) have viewed over 9.6 billion pages. Since April, page-views have gone up 11.0% and increased an amazing 227% since May 2008. Opera says Mini users generated nearly 160 million MB of data for operators worldwide in May 2009, and claims that that would be 1.5 PB worth of data if the company didn’t compress this data up to 90%. → Read More
The HTC Ozone might just be one of the best deals at Verizon Wireless. Check out everything you get for only $49.99 after a $70 mail-in rebate: QWERTY, Winmo 6.1, global roaming, Wi-Fi, and teathering. I don’t think you could ask for a better value out of a brand new Verizon phone. → Read More
Tokyo-based electronics company Lancerlink has announced the iJector [JP] today, an LCOS projector that you can use with your iPod or iPhone. Shaped like a dock, the device makes it possible to watch video stored on your iPod on the go via its built-on stereo speakers (3W×2ch). → Read More
AdMob has released its metrics report for May 2009 (PDF download link), and looked closely at the actual distribution of users of the iPhone apps in their network this time. The main take-away? There may be tens of thousands of applications available for the iPhone, but a whole lot of them simply never actually make it onto the device.
Out of 2,309 tracked applications (representing 15.1 million unique iPhone and iPod Touch users), no less than 54% are actively used by south of 1,000 persons. That’s a very long tail there, and not an economically interesting one at that. Only about 20% of the tracked apps have more than 10,000 active users, and only 5% (or 116 apps) boasts more than 100,000 active users. For the record, an active user is considered to be someone who used the app at least once in May. → Read More
A group of Movable Type specialists – some of them former Six Apart employees – wanted to speed up the development of the open source version of the popular publishing platform and decided to group together in a quest to build an independent, community-driven CMS for bloggers and other publishers.
The platform is dubbed Melody and will be managed by a non-profit named The Open Melody Software Group, which has Anil Dash (Six Apart’s outspoken VP and Chief Evangelist) on its board. → Read More
