Which countries are the worst greenhouse gas emitters? Now you can see for yourself on this handy Google Map created by a department of the UN and Google. The map shows changes in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 to 2006. Green is good (a decrease in emissions) and purple is bad (an increase).
So who are the worst offenders? Topping the list is Sweden! The country has managed to increase its emissions by 110 percent over that time period. So much for Nordic purity. Following Sweden is Turkey (with a 103 percent increase) and Canada (with a 55 percent increase). Yes, Canada. What is it with these northern countries? → Read More
As we move farther and farther into the digital age, we begin to see some serious problems with an all-digital lifestyle. Take parking meters, for example. As much as a pain as it is to root under your car seat looking for loose change to feed the meter, there aren’t too many ways to avoid actually putting money into a traditional meter. (Or maybe there are. I haven’t bothered to investigate, since I don’t currently own a vehicle.) Newer electronic parking meters, though, can be pretty easily subverted, as demonstrated at the Black Hat conference this week. → Read More
Less than a week ago, after failing to mention Bebo in AOL’s list of core product goals, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong was roughly quoted as saying: ““Bebo may be better off under AOL Ventures, with it’s own P&L.” This led to speculation that AOL is planning to spin Bebo off into a separate company, and, sure enough, things have begun to change already at the social networking site. Stephane Panier was just appointed Global Head of Bebo. Panier was previously VP and COO at the network. Panier is an experienced strategist and financial officer who spent time at Google. His appointment fills a position left vacant for 14 months after Joanna Shields’ departure. AOL famously purchased Bebo for $850 million in early 2008. So far, it has failed to make much of the acquisition, despite expansion into Europe. Is AOL trying to end speculation about a potential sell-off? Or is AOL preparing to cut its losses? What do you think? → Read More
There’s something in the water of Web 2.0 that makes every semi-successful start-up desperate to “give something back” before they’ve really “got” anything themselves. In the good old days, corporate social responsibility was a pricey but worthwhile PR investment; now, having social conscience seems to be part of the job description for aspiring tech entrepreneurs. So it is with Skimbit‘s Alicia Navarro, whose affiliate sales product Skimlinks has been mopping up at awards ceremonies this year: Alicia’s email signature proudly boasts Best New Business and the Special Award for Technical Innovation from the New Media Age Awards and Innovative Publisher of the Year, Best New Entrant in Affiliate Marketing and Best Use of Technology from the A4U Affiliate Marketing Awards. Beat that. In May, Skimbit launched Good.ly, a URL shortening service tied to an affiliate tracking system that pays out “the lion’s share” of any revenue to a charity of your choice (55%, actually). Now, they’ve launched a campaign called “Chat for Charity”, pairing up with Prezzybox.com (and soon others). → Read More
While Google dominates the search market of South Eastern Europe, it has never had a real presence here. Until now. Google just announced its official presence in Croatia, from where it will run all operations for the rest of the region, including Serbia, Albania, and beyond. Internet marketing, especially search engine marketing, is still in its infancy in the region. Leading local web portals, such as Index and B92, still account for a lion’s share of the internet marketing investments. Google’s AdWords programme has only recently become popular among advertisers in the region, although campaigns are frequently mismanaged. A rising number of AdWords-certified individuals and companies are slowly changing this. As far as competition on the pay-per-click front is concerned, Google can count on Facebook’s internal ads, as well as regional systems such as eTarget. → Read More
“We’re here today to announce the death of comments.”
That’s what JS-Kit CEO Khris Loux said in his opening remarks at our Real-Time Stream CrunchUp earlier this month. He went on to unveil ECHO, JS-Kit’s new take on how conversations should be happening around content on the web. And today, we’re going to try a limited test of this new system on the TechCrunch Network.
To reiterate, this is just a test that will reside under only this post for the time-being, so let us know what you think.
While at first glance, the comments you see below this post may look like a slight variation of any other commenting system, the reality is much different. Sure, a part of ECHO is made up by what we think of as traditional comments, that is, comments you fill out on a particular article and post to it. But the majority of the content in this commenting area will actually be populated from sources all around the web talking about this piece of content. → Read More
There’s now free Wi-Fi at Barnes and Noble. The big bad book store chain just flipped the switch on the free service today, which is provided by AT&T. → Read More
Those crazy Germans just love their pooches. Despite a downturn that’s hitting the central European country hard, German dog owners’ community site dogSpot.de just raised a second round of funding. dogSpot’s existing investors (including the site’s founder and a couple of Angels) have re-invested in the website, which also has a sister spinoff called catSpot for, you guessed it, German cat owners. Sounds like the majority of the cash will go toward core projects like scaling the back end and building the community. The company behind dogSpot was launched in 2007; the website itself debuted last October. It’s already receiving seven million page views per month. Incumbent competitors, which are generally less social than dogSpot, include Hallohund, the brilliantly named MyWuff and Dogzunited. → Read More
British hacker Gary McKinnon has finally lost his latest High Court bid to avoid extradition to the United States to face charges for breaking into US military and Nasa computers in 2001 and 2002. McKinnon was tracked down and arrested under the Computer Misuse Act by the UK National Hi-Tech Crime Unit. After his arrest, and without a lawyer present, McKinnon admitted to hacking, but denies it was malicious or that he caused damage costing $800,000 (£487,000). The argument of his lawyers was not that he shouldn’t be tried, but that he should be tried in the UK and that his extreme Asperger’s Syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder, should be taken into account, especially since it could lead to suicide, if he was to be extradited. However, the judges said extradition was “a lawful and proportionate response to his offending”. He faces up to 70 years in prison if convicted in the U.S. of what prosecutors have called “the biggest military computer hack of all time”. He accessed 97 government computers belonging to organisations including the US Navy and Nasa. Justifiably the U.S. is pretty sensitive about these things and under a 2003 treaty, agreed in the aftermath of 9/11 attacks, the U.S. is able to extradite a British citizen if it can prove to the UK courts “reasonable suspicion”. Now, exactly what was this hack? McKinnon has always insisted he was looking for classified documents on UFOs which he believed the US authorities had suppressed. This is not a normal guy here. This is a mega geek who believed in UFOs. We’re not talking terrorist material. He’s been described as a 43-year-old “UFO eccentric”. There has been a “Free Gary” campaign backed by 100 MPs and celebrities like Bob Geldof and Chrissie Hynde. → Read More
A few weeks ago, Jay-Z released the song “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune),” much to the delight of some corners of the Internet. It’s basically a song that rails against the proliferation of Auto-Tune, software that can alter/correct the pitch of someone’s voice. Its most notorious use is to make the singer sound like a robot, thus hiding their inability to sing at all. It’s huge in hip-hop, for whatever reason. → Read More
Take the MacBook Air, shrink the screen down an inch, slap in some netbook components, and load it up with Windows 7 Release Candidate and — drumroll, please — you’ve got the iiView A2 out of Singapore. Oh, and lower the price to $468. That’s kind of important there. → Read More
What happens when you take the Samsung OmniaPro, improve its keyboard and the general look of the device, then strip it of its smartphone OS? You get the Verizon Rogue. For those looking for the smartphone package without the smarts, it’s a nice piece of kit. That QWERTY keyboard looks downright delicious, it’s got a nicely sized AMOLED screen, and the autofocus on that 3 megapixel camera should make your on-the-go shots slightly less craptastic. It’s got everything we’d want in Samsung’s first mid-range Android phone — except, well, Android. Oh well – if you’re not the sort of person to get hung up on an OS, PhoneArena says you ought to be able to grab this guy come August 15th. → Read More
The recession in online advertising, which began in the first quarter of 2009, continued into the second. Every quarter we keep track of the combined advertising revenues of the four largest Web advertising companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL), which together represent the lion’s share of all online advertising revenues and is a decent proxy for the market as a whole. In the second quarter of 2009, their combined global ad revenues were $7.864 billion, down 3.4 percent from a year ago.
In economics, a general rule of thumb is that two down quarters marks a recession. Last quarter saw the first annual decline in advertising revenues of 2.1 percent. And the annual decline this quarter got a little worse. However, on a sequential basis compared to last quarter, it is actually pretty much flat (but still down 0.18 percent). So we now have two down quarters on both an annual and sequential basis.
Will this recession continue into the current quarter, or did we just witness a fundamental “reset”, as Steve Ballmer likes to call it. → Read More
Look at that photo. All of that is edible, and likely delicious. The mouse, the iPhone, the MacBook Pro, all of it. The pens, the Post-It notes, the mouse pad, all made of sweet, sweet cake. → Read More
Oh, the Internet. How mysterious it is. Packed from e-window to e-wall with “experts”, 95% of whom have no clue what they’re talking about. Then there’s that other 5% who, to some extent, do have an idea of what they’re talking about. Unfortunately, the endless torrent of falsities (bored kids making up Apple products, bored creepers misrepresenting the fact that they have male bits) on the internet have given the masses such a pessimistic thick skin that anything even remotely dubious is declared as false. → Read More
LG has just announced the SL80 and SL90 series televisions, televisions so strikingly beautiful that peace has broken out in the Middle East and Cher has finally forgiven Sonny in her heart. The SL80 (above) and 90s (below) have an edge to edge, bezel-less design with motion smoothing and improved contrast ratio. • The SL80 series utilizes slim CCFL technology with TruMotion 240Hz to achieve its dramatically thin profile and provide superior picture quality. Delivering consumers a compelling visual experience, the SL80 series is less than 1.8 inches thick at its slimmest point. The SL80 will be available beginning in August, in 42-, 47-, and 55-inch class screen sizes* at MSRPs of $1,599.95, $1,899.95 and $2,799.95 respectively. • The SL90′s LED display technology provides enhanced picture quality and energy efficiency. The SL90 series will be released later this year in 42- and 47-inch class screen sizes* at MSRPs to be announced later. → Read More
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