So, Microsoft had that contest where it would feature one user’s picture on Bing for an entire day — you know, the one I was mad about because you couldn’t submit keg stand pictures. The idea behind the contest was to have users submit their best summer vacation photos to a special Facebook group, where they could then be voted on. Well, now we have a winner. And it doesn’t exactly reek of summer.
The winning image (below), was one of 9,400 picture submissions. You’d think out of all of those, users would have found a more perfect summer vacation image than a giant lightning storm, but whatever, it is a good picture. → Read More
It’s no secret the Japanese have a penchant for vending machines (even though there are – contrary to popular belief – no machines selling panties in this country). Now Hitachi made one step forward by developing a machine that doesn’t need to be fed with coins or bills anymore. Your finger will be enough. → Read More
Back in 2006, when Wall Street was still flying high and Chelsea were sill kings of the English Premier League, Neill Blomkamp was in charge of the Halo movie. Thankfully, the project was canned. Blomkamp moved on to other projects, namely District 9, which looked cool till the actual trailer came out and disappointed me greatly. → Read More
Well, we never thought it would happen because of its intense rivalry with Google, but Facebook is almost ready to launch an official app for Android phones. Hints are already popping up here and there, but I’ve been able to confirm it. The app could hit the Android Market (its version of the App Store) as soon as the end of this week.
Facebook’s Android app will launch with a more limited set of features than its current, and very popular, iPhone app. For instance, it won’t have an inbox, I’m told by a source who has seen it. But it will have the full Facebook stream, which is really all you need. The Facebook Android app is built around the stream and status updates. It was built with Facebook’s new Stream API. Your updates keep coming in, with a notification number telling you how many new items are available at any given time. → Read More
Usually when I read a long article, I’ll say something like, “Free up 20 minutes so you can read the whole thing.” I’m not sure I’m going to say that today, having just finished an article in the New Yorker, which is usually good for a profile or two, about the Kindle. And it’s not because the article is down on the Kindle—I don’t own any Amazon stock, so I don’t care if Kindle sinks or swims—but because it doesn’t really say anything that you probably didn’t already know. → Read More
..plus her source is tight, eh?
Coder Girl by K-Squared. Catchy, funny, cute girls. But, as Fake Steve notes “this depicts two demographics that don’t actually exist at Apple.” → Read More
Dick Tracy, eat your heart out. Better yet, do it whilst having a live video chat with someone on the LG GD910. So, yes – the LG GD910 Wrist phone does video chat. Unfortunately, all signs point at this thing costing roughly the same as a down payment on a new Honda, and it’s pretty likely that the video chat feature will only play friendly with other GD910s. Unless you’ve got a posse of disgustingly rich friends, you’re looking at some pretty lonely video chats, [Via Slashgear] → Read More
This is, without a doubt, the best comment ever on TechCrunch. Left by “J” on MG’s latest iPhone rant about the Google Voice debacle. Beautiful.
AT&T: You want answers?
TechCrunch: We think we’re entitled to them.
AT&T: You want answers?!
TechCrunch: We want Google Voice on our iPhones.
I’m a sucker for products that make installing A/V equipment easier and these cables from Atlona do just that. The ends swivel to allow for tighter mounting against the wall. You see, some cables feature large, cool looking ends that don’t like to bend against a wall, which then pushes the flat screen out a bit or forcing the installer to cut into the wall. But these cables bend in half which should make for a cleaner install. Wall brackets are getting thin and thin, and these cables will allow installers to practically flush mount a flat screen. → Read More
Keith wasn’t as boisterous during our second filming of the app as he was the first time. Hopefully you guys get the idea. So what is Booyah and what does it bring to the iPhone that no one else has done? Before we dive into that here’s a little background info on the Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup. Founded by three former videogame industry vets from Blizzard, Activision and Insomniac Games, Booyah looks to shake things up with real-life achievements for the iPhone (and iPod Touch). Booyah CEO Keith Lee is an industry vet having worked on Ratchet and Clank, Diablo II, Resistance: Fall of Man before parting ways with Blizzard to launch Booyah with Brian Morrisroe and Sam Christiansen. Booyah’s main goal is “to motivate people to pursue their real-life passions while positively impacting themselves and the community around them. It’s the first achievement system for life.” → Read More
We’ve been screaming and whining about the iPhone App Store for nigh on a year now and we seem to have avoiding talking about one of the most obvious sources for information about the Store: Steve himself. Harry “Long Tail” McCracken remembers what Steve said way back in the old days about the App Store. Jobs said that Apple wouldn’t distribute porn or malicious apps or privacy-invading apps, and said that Apple’s interests and those of third-party developers were the same. The slide also mentioned “Bandwidth hogs,” which apparently meant stuff like SlingPlayer, and “Unforseen,” which I assumed at the time referred to other applications that put iPhone owners at risk in one way or another. What he didn’t do is say that Apple would reject software that competed with Apple or AT&T offerings. This “unforeseen” section is what really bugs everyone. Google Voice, for example, could feasibly recreate some basic iPhone functionality and also act as a resource hog. → Read More
You almost have to admire AT&T’s consistency. They are consistently finding new ways to screw up almost daily now.
The latest issue involves the story we covered yesterday about apps using the Google Voice service getting pulled from Apple’s App Store. In a follow-up post, we didn’t exactly go out on a limb suggesting that it was AT&T and not Apple, that was responsible for the app being pulled. After all, word is that Apple VP Phil Schiller personally ushered one of those apps, GV Mobile, through the approval process initially. And today brings word that the apps were indeed removed at AT&T’s request. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber cites a “reliable little birdie” on the news, and we’ve just heard the same thing from a source as well.
While some found it very hard to believe that AT&T would be the ones behind something like this, given that it allows Google Voice apps on other phones on its network, those kind of contradictions are nothing new when it comes to AT&T with the iPhone. It’s the same contradiction that prevents the SlingPlayer iPhone app from working on AT&T’s network, while it works just fine on other AT&T devices. And the same one that is likely to cripple a Hulu app, if it ever gets released. → Read More
It’s been a long, long time since I’ve looked at turntables, so I rather expected a new one to have fancy features. The Stanton T.55 USB turntable is a no-frills turntable. Aside from the USB port, there’s little obvious difference between this turntable and the ancient cabinet turntable I inherited from my grandmother. → Read More
IBM has announced two strategic moves today with the acquisitions of Ounce Labs and SPSS Inc. Terms of the former deal were not disclosed, while the latter is expected to close at approximately $1.2 billion. Ounce Labs develops source code scanning software designed to identify system vulnerabilities throughout the software development cycle. The idea is that by integrating security analysis into the development process, vulnerabilities can be located and addressed before a product goes live. IBM will integrate Ounce Labs into its Rational family of Web security applications, likely with hopes that additional security measures will make customers feel more comfortable working with applications in the cloud. SPSS, on the other hand, is a provider of predictive analytics software. The deal is IBM’s second acquisition in the information on demand space following Cognos Inc in 2007, and comes nearly two years after IBM announced it was working alongside SPSS to deliver analytics capabilities within IBM DB2. The move will substantially beef up IBM’s business analytics offering, and place the company in better position to compete with SAP, which currently commands 33% of the market. With the deals IBM continues the trend of acquiring companies at an astounding pace, and given recent acquisition activity from Oracle and Intel, the enterprise acquisition market is showing signs of life. It will be interesting to see if the ailing economy has wielded its worst, or if we are merely passing through the eye of the storm. → Read More
Hosting provider SoftLayer was partially taken down this morning from a DDOS attack, and several well known websites, including TechMeme and TwitPic, went down with it.
The problem at SoftLayer was resolved, but some users of OpenDNS, a DNS service provider that is becoming more and more popular, still can’t reach those websites. The reason? OpenDNS caches IP addresses for domain names on a user’s computer, and they’ve cached a bunch of bad DNS entries now on these computers. This speeds up web surfing considerably, and has helped some users avoid major outages at the ISP level in the past. But in cases like today, with outages at the hosting level, the bad IP information ends up being cached for up to a day.
Users who know what’s going on can reboot their computers to clear the cache, but that’s clearly not a good overall solution. OpenDNS says they are turning on a feature called SmartCache that caches both the current and “last good” IP address, so situations like today won’t be an issue any longer. → Read More
Years ago, London ruled one-fourth of the world’s population. Now? Training its civil servants how to tweet “issues of relevance or upcoming events.” → Read More
Yo, Sidekick LX ’09 owners. Check out the Download Catalog. You should find the Sidekick Sync app somewhere in there and guess what? The app brings push email, attachment viewing, syncing, and Exchange support to your beloved Sidekick. Tits, right? (If you don’t see the app right away, check back a little bit later today) → Read More
More power to Apple and its legion of accessory makers. Asking people to pay $20 to use your own headphones with an $80 MP3 player is ballsy — brass ballsy. Such is the story of the new iPod shuffle, though, and I’m willing to bet that people will indeed pay for an inline headphone adapter. → Read More
