The internet is all aflutter with stories rolling in concerning the Palm Pre being sold for $99 with a two-year contract at neighborhood Best Buy locations. Although the Pre is nowhere to be found on Best Buy’s website, here’s an in-store photo from PreCentral.net for your enjoyment. Not a bad deal at all, considering the $99 price is out the door — no rebates or anything like that. Looks like you’ll have to actually get in the car and go to the store if you want to get in on this deal, though, but maybe grab the wife and kids and make a day of it! [Pre Central via FatWallet] Update – False alarm, everyone. John Bernier is saying via Best Buy’s Twitter help line – Twelp Force – that the price is still $199. Now, you still might be able to get the deal if your local Best Buy hasn’t had the price changed or is feeling rather gracious. YMMV. → Read More
As if AT&T wasn’t already bad enough. In an act that is sure to spark internet rebellions everywhere, AT&T has apparently declared war on the extremely popular imageboard 4chan.org, blocking some of the site’s most popular message boards, including /r9k/ and the infamous /b/. moot, who started 4chan and continues to run the site, has posted a note to the 4chan status blog indicating that AT&T is in fact filtering/blocking the site for many of its customers (we’re still trying to confirm from AT&T’s side).
Reports of the blocking began to surface on reddit this afternoon, and a number of blogs are beginning to pick up on the story, though it doesn’t seem like any have managed to get a comment from AT&T (we’ve reached out to the company and will update once we hear back). → Read More
A lot of readers were incredulous over last week’s news that Ning raised another $15 million in venture capital from Lightspeed Venture Partners at a $750 million valuation. That comes despite the fact that Ning traffic appears to be flatlining, and revenue to date is likely very small.
A typical comment to that post: “What an ASTOUNDING way to waste money.” Others pointed out that venture capitalists typically invest hoping to at least have a chance at a 10x return – and in Ning’s case, it seems unlikely that the company will be worth the necessary $7.5 billion any time soon. So, why’d they invest?
Marketing. → Read More
So yesterday we saw the new Android version, Donut, get released to developers. Lots of sweetness inside, as we detailed then, but there are just a couple corrections to be observed. It’s not Android 2.0 — the version numbers aren’t just going to jump up like that. I suspect Google is working on having the whole idea of version numbers be secondary to the pastry names. So Donut it is, and no more. Secondly, multitouch is still not implemented. While you can hack it in, as we’ve seen in the past, there are hardware limitations and just throwing it out there might break some apps. However, Donut has some “kernel commitments” in it, meaning that it will be made integral to the OS at some point. Just don’t expect any miracles when they roll out Donut for real. Keep an eye on Cyanogen’s Twitter, it’s been our best source for Donut news. → Read More
I’m skeptical of the early 2010 release date for this thing, since it seems pretty concept-y at this point. And how is it going to stay on your ear?!
The idea is fine, though: in one form it’s a ring that you wear, I suppose, on your finger. When you get a call, the little OLED display lights up and you can answer it by twisting the ring into its earpiece form. Somehow I don’t believe it’ll work as well as they want it to. → Read More
Not sure which question is more appropriate here: why or why not? We’ve already witnessed the renewed interest in URL shortening services with the rise of communication platforms where brevity appears to be the norm rather than a side effect (Twitter!).
It was little surprising to see a custom one pop up that focuses specifically on iTunes links.
iTunes links are inherently long, non-sexy and practically unsharable web addresses that lead people directly to Apple’s media management software program where they can download applications for their iPhone or iPod Touch in a section called the App Store, à la http://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/browserRedirect?url=itms%253A%252F%252Fax.itunes.apple.com%252FWebObjects%252FMZStore.woa%252Fwa%252FviewSoftware%253Fid%253D321041850%2526mt%253D8. → Read More
Those little green reweet buttons you see across the web on sites like this one have helped TweetMeme rise in popularity. The buttons are now so ubiquitous that the service has seemingly become the de-facto retweeting mechanism for content on the web. But it looks like it’s about to get a challenger, with a killer name, Retweet.com.
Retweet.com currently only has a a landing page saying that it’s “coming soon,” so it’s hard to know exactly what it is from that. But there are plenty of clues around the web pointing to it being a TweetMeme competitor. The main hint comes from a design contest taking place at 99designs. The prize is over $1,000 to design the site, and all of the mockups look very similar to TweetMeme (which, to be fair, takes a lot of its look from sites like Digg). → Read More
Who knew statistical computing competitions could be so cut throat? Since we reported on the contest last night, two teams in the Netflix Prize have spent the last few hours jumping back and forth on the Netflix leaderboard as the three-year-long competition ticked into its final moments, with last minute sniping submissions coming from both sides. Finally, the results are in: The Ensemble has managed to come from behind to upset BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos with a top submission of 10.10% — an improvement of .01% — only 4 minutes before the contest closed.
It’s been a long road to get here. Over the last three years computer science teams around the world have been vying for the Netflix Prize — a competition that invited teams to try to improve on Netflix’s movie recommendation algorithm by 10%, with a reward of $1 million to the best submission. Since then teams have gotten progressively closer to the magical 10% mark, but it wasn’t until last month when a number of top teams joined forces to form BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos that the barrier was finally broken, with a score of 10.08%. However, their announcement kicked off a 30 day last call period where other teams were invited to make their final submissions. → Read More
Imagine you’re sitting at the dining table reading the latest Wrestling Observer, as you do from time to time. Nothing too crazy, just minding your own business. Then, suddenly—it’s always suddenly—the microwave hops off the counter, wielding a knife, and comes charging after you. Oh, dear! → Read More
Last week saw an unusual burst of acquisition activity among Web companies. Yahoo bought email add-on Xoopit for about $20 million, Nokia bought social address book provider Cellity, and overshadowing them all was Amazon’s $928 million purchase of Zappos.
But the week started off with another acquisition which quickly got lost in all the subsequent news. Advertising network Adknowledge bought KITN Media for its flagship virtual currency product, Super Rewards. The acquisition price was undisclosed, but Eric Eldon at VentureBeat noted that the rumored price was $30 million (he also noted that AdKnowledge disputed that number as “patently inaccurate.”)
I heard the same number the night before the acquisition was announced. It was being floated by one of AdKnowledge’s competitors. When I asked Adknowledge and Super Rewards about it, they gave me the same line: that it “was incorrect and it would be a material misrepresentation of the transaction.” I dug around a little more and found out that the price was actually more than $30 million. A source with direct knowledge of the deal told me that it was closer to $50 million. → Read More
Squash The Street by Last Legion Games, is the latest iPhone/iPod Touch game to be chronicled in my “Gaming on the Throne” series at CrunchGear (see explanation). Initially when I played STS I was a little underwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong, the execution was solid, but it seemed kind of repetitive to me. Then something happened that changed my mind and ultimately led to me giving it a thumbs up. We’ll come back to that. First let’s look at the game synopsis, directly from Last Legion’s website: Financial Crisis? Let your rage rain down on the crooks and swindlers who caused it. → Read More
News aggregator site and Digg-competitor Mixx had a rough June. Traffic to the site took a 68 percent nosedive in the U.S. from May to June, according to comScore (see chart). Compete shows a similar trend.
Wondering if Mixx had maybe been paying for traffic and had now stopped, I asked CEO Chris McGill if this was the case. Absolutely not. He replied: “We have never paid for traffic… Not once. How could we? … We have operated for two years on almost no money.” Hard to argue with that. Mixx has only raised $3.5 million to Digg’s $40 million, and is “nine guys sitting in a boiler room.”
So what happened? → Read More
Last month news broke that a team of computer scientists had finally managed to improve Netflix’s recommendation algorithm by 10%, making them eligible to win the $1 million Netflix Prize, a competition that began back in 2006. The team, BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos, is composed of two former leaders in the competition who banded together in attempt to finally break the 10% barrier and managed to succeed with a score of 10.08%. However, their announcement kicked off a 30 day window where other teams were invited to make their final submissions and potentially take the prize. Tonight, with just one day remaining, a team called The Ensemble has managed to overtake BellKor with a score of 10.09% — an improvement of .01% over the former leaders. You can see the full leaderboard here.
According to its homepage, the Ensemble is made up of two teams who chose to join forces: “Grand Prize Team” and “Opera Solutions and Vandelay United”. The Ensemble has just posted the following blog post to its official site:
We are happy today to have made a submission which surpasses Netflix’s 10% Grand Prize target. The Ensemble is the second team to do this in less than a month. We are very proud of our achievements, and those of our top competitor, Bellkor’s Pragmatic Chaos.
We actually have two reviews in one in this case; the Joby Gorillapod SLR-Zoom, and the optional ballhead mount. Do I recommend you trust your expensive camera gear to this device? Simply put, yes. I have a Nikon D300, and I put my precious on the Gorillapod with it’s 18-200mm lens on it, and it didn’t buckle. → Read More
Can it be done? Does it not look as impressive as you’d think? Do you feel sorry for this guy and then suddenly say “Holy Wow! He’s playing the bass, guitar, drums, and singing vocals all at once! I want some of his meth?” Yes! Yes! Yes! via JRob → Read More
In the last few days we’ve gotten multiple tips about a seemingly new phenomenon on Facebook: people are receiving status updates from people they’ve attempted to add as friends, but who have not yet accepted their friend request. In effect, they’re seeing these users’ status updates without being able to see their profiles — something that hasn’t previously happened on Facebook, at least not until very recently. So has Facebook finally turned on the Twitter-like ‘follow’ feature it promised months ago, which would allow users to start receiving status updates from people they aren’t friends with?
Not exactly. As it turns out, this feature was first announced in late June, nestled in Facebook’s blog post about the beta rollout of its Publisher upgrade, which lets you choose who you’d like a given update to be visible to. Now, any time you add a Facebook friend who has set their status updates to ‘Everyone’, you’ll start receiving those updates in your News Feed, even if they never accept your friend request. → Read More
When I first moved to Silicon Valley there was no such thing as “geek chic.” A trip through Frye’s Electronics told you everything you needed to know about engineer culture: It was a one-stop-shop for circuits and motherboards, huge bags of candy, cases of Jolt, and porn.
Things have changed a bit. Today, the hair is purposely disheveled and coders not only get out in the fresh air– they go climbing. Some even drink green tea instead of coffee. (Cough, cough, Kevin Rose.) And, increasingly, I’m seeing start-up kitchens with — gasp– no junk food. Some have even called full-on bans against soda and RedBull. In short, we’ve gone all California on ourselves.
It’s kinda lame, but in an employer’s best interest to swap out carb-crashing junk food for more sustainable fare. Enter Blueprint Cleanse– a company that’s opening San Francisco operations in the next few months and, IMHO, is going to absolutely clean up, literally and figuratively. And in August, California residents can try it for $20 cheaper per day.
We’re already huge fans at TechCrunch: I’ve done it, Leena has done it, Heather is doing it next week and even Arrington has put down his Chipotle burrito for a few days to cleanse. Yes, Arrington. → Read More
