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
“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
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
Yesterday InsideView, a service that mashes social data into sales intelligence, announced the launch of SmartCloud, a tool allowing instant integration with practically any social media site or business data source.
With the offering, sales representatives can quickly tap into a content source and receive business intelligence through SalesView, the company’s content mashup engine. The key to the new release is the instant, plug-and-play integration of new content sources into SalesView. The company announced integration with Twitter in May, and the latest release makes it possible to quickly delve into data from a slew of other media sites and content providers.
Social CRM and services of the like are quickly becoming a popular tool for businesses looking to manage the information overload that has come with the increasingly real-time nature of social media. Oracle and Salesforce CRM products perform similar analysis on Twitter, Facebook, and other major content sites, but do not as of yet offer a simple way to integrate new sources. → Read More
Intel’s apparently putting the kibosh on orders for its super low-voltage Z-series Atom processors. The Z-series chips can be found mostly in UMPCs and MIDs but had also made their way into various netbooks like the 12-inch Dell Mini series and the Acer Aspire One 751h, to name a few, as they provided a nice loophole to the “no screens over 1024×600 resolution” rule. → Read More
12seconds showed off a really slick-looking new iPhone app at our Real-Time Stream CrunchUp earlier this month. Unfortunately, that’s not quite ready yet. But in the meantime, they have another iPhone app that is ready, and it’s about as simple as can be — which may be good thing.
Called 12cast, the app claims to be the “simplest way to get video on Twitter.” Here’s how it works, you open the app, enter a title for the video, then rotate it to the left to bring up the video camera. You then record footage, hit send, and you’re done. (If you’re not logged into Twitter, there will be a prompt that comes up to allow you to do that.) → Read More
The path of the Ninja is a deadly one, my friends. It’s also relatively clean. They don’t like clutter. Very fastidious — almost like cats. So it should come as no surprise that all your Ninja friends probably use these Ninja Star Coat Hooks. → Read More
A vacuuming robot: you know you want one. I have a Roomba. It sits in its box under my desk ever since we hired a cleaning person to come twice a month. Seriously, though, you should get a robotic vacuum. Amazon has knocked $80 off one of the higher-end Roomba units, the 500 series, bringing it to a cool $199 with free shipping (today only). → Read More
Apparently, the New York Times is still unsure whether its reporters should be allowed to Tweet or not. Intrigued by this tweet from writer and consultant Stowe Boyd, I registered for the New York Times’ Insight Lab, an online community / focus group made up of Times readers interested in providing the media company with direct feedback.
The homepage features a quick poll asking members if they want to see Times’ reporters and editors on Twitter or not. I guess this is the most pressing issue the New York Times wants to hear from its readers about.
For some reason, close to three quarters of the respondents indicated that they’d prefer if the journalists stay far away from the micro-sharing service. Only 7 percent had no idea what Twitter is. → Read More
