It’s a big ol’ day of scoop confirmation for us. First the Nokia N900 turns out to be an exact spec-for-spec match with what we said it would be back in May. Just a few hours later, we’re seeing confirmation that Virgin Mobile is getting the LG Rumor2 – just as we said they would back in July. Yeah, the second one isn’t quite as huge as the first one – but a scoop is a scoop, right? We didn’t have a shred of doubt in our source, but now some eagle-eye has caught it in writing. Virgin Mobile just kickstarted a Twitter contest which they’re calling “Twitter Rumors” – and as if the name weren’t enough, the prize list clearly states “Three (3) winners (one for each daily Promotional Period) will receive 1 Virgin Mobile Rumor2 handset and $50 Top-Up Card”. Thats about as concrete as things get shy of a press release, folks. [Via EngadgetMobile] → Read More
Thank the Lord! Microsoft just confirmed that Xbox 360 price drop we’ve been bleating about for entirely too many days now. Yes, the Xbox 360 Elite goes down by $100 to $299; the Pro goes from $299 to $249 while supplies last (which means it’s being phased out entirely); and the Arcade stays at $199. → Read More
Google docs is a useful application for sharing documents, but previously didn’t allow for sharing across different languages. Today, Google is launching a feature in Google Docs that will automatically translate documents into 42 different languages.
In the tools menu of Google Docs, you can now click “Translate document” and choose the language to translate too. This functionality uses Google Translate’s technology. You can replace the original document with the translation or save the new translated version as a different document. → Read More
Bowing to privacy concerns by Canada, Facebook is going to change the way all apps work on Facebook, particularly how they access user data. Facebook will be further fine-tuning its privacy controls. The biggest change will be how third party applications access a user’s personal data and that of his or her network of friends. Currently, when you install a Facebook app, you get a pop-up box which asks you to allow the third-party app to access personal information. Once you give permission, the app can work.
Now, the apps will have to ask repeatedly for permission as they request new types of information, and users will have to “specifically approve any access to their friends’ information.” What this amounts to is basically more privacy notifications explaining exactly what type of data is being shared and giving users more control over what they want to share. Facebook explains on its developer blog: → Read More
Waaaay back in May, we put up just shy of 750 words jam-packed with details on Nokia’s unannounced N900 Internet Tablet. This morning, Nokia finally pulled back the curtains on the device – and man, we absolutely nailed it. Though we would have expected Nokia to announce this at next week’s Nokia World event, they’ve gone and verified all of the details we’d mentioned previously. 3.5″ 800×480 touchscreen? Check. 32GB internal storage? Check. 5 megapixel camera, T-Mobile USA friendly 1700mhz bands, and running Maemo 5? Three checks, please. → Read More
Amazon’s lopped over $60 off the 22-disc “Total World Domination Collection” of Family Guy episodes, bringing the total price to just $75 (good today only). → Read More
At this very moment, at this very villa in the Israeli city of Hertzeliya Pituach, the final preparations are being made for what can be best described as ‘TwitterSense’—a way to automatically filter your Twitter stream so that the most relevant Tweets come out on top. The location in question is the home of my6sense, which currently offers a powerful way to filter news feeds. It is applying its filtering technology to Twitter and by the looks of it you’ll soon be able to follow as many Twitter users as you want and still never miss out on the most important tweets.
It took insistent prodding on my part to get my6sense to spill some of the beans and give me a sneak peak. The good news is that TwitterSense (my term, not theirs) is real and it works. The bad news is that it’ll take a couple of more months to be deployed. And yes, it could greatly improve the way we consume Twitter streams.
The advent of a TwitterSense offering could not be timelier as the onslaught of noise on Twitter has increased dramatically and its manageability has become a real pain point. Even Robert “The Stream Prince” Scoble has had to take dramatic measures, namely, slashing the number of users he follows on Twitter and befriends on Facebook. I, on the other hand, keep the number of people I follow on Twitter in the neighborhood of 150. This number works well for me, but I keep wondering whether I’m missing out on users who could provide insights relevant to my personal and professional interests. That is exactly where TwitterSense would come into play. → Read More
We’re not inclined to refute reports from a professional journalist on Twitter, so when Daily Telegraph reporter Jon Swaine says Google’s UK headquarters in London are currently on fire, we believe it’s true.
Especially since the man has managed to provide some evidence by uploading a picture to photo-sharing service TwitPic.
Here’s a clear picture of fire on the roof of some building, supposedly housing Google UK’s offices on Buckingham Palace Road. Let’s hope no one gets hurt.
(Via @Scobleizer) → Read More
It got skewered at last year’s TechCrunch50. Then when it finally launched in private beta, it “accidentally deleted” all of its initial user accounts. But iMindi is back and it wants you to help it build the Mindex.
iMindi wants to be a Twitter on steroids. Actually, it is the exact opposite of Twitter. It is more for people who want to have lengthy discussions and explore topics deeply. Instead of a 140-character limit, it has a 20,000-character limit. → Read More
In Japan, Sharp has been known for their ultra-mobile Zaurus for quite a while now, and today, the company added a new mini device to its line-up of mini laptops, the PC-Z1 [press release in English]. Marketed as a “Mobile Internet Tool”, the PC-Z1 comes with a tiny 5-inch TFT LCD (a touchscreen) and measures just 161.4 x 108.7 x 19.7 ~ 24.8mm (weight: 409g). → Read More
AdMob is out with its latest Mobile Metrics Report, this time combining its readily available network data with survey results from over 1,000 users of iPhone, iPod Touch and Android devices. Just for your reference, AdMob claims to serve ads for more than 7,000 mobile Web sites and 3,000 applications around the world.
Key takeaways from the July report, with some commentary of my own after the jump. → Read More
Bambuser, the European mobile video streaming startup attempting to de-throne Silicon Valley’s Qik, has today launched its Android application on the Android market. That brings their mobile live video service to Symbian s60, Windows Mobile and the iPhone, as well as through regular webcams.
Bambuser’s main claim is that it has the lowest latency out of all the mobile video streaming services. In order to keep the video stream as close to real-time as possible, the Bambuser app drops a few frames here and there, while at the same time storing locally on the handset any dropped frames or audio that can’t get through during the live broadcast. What data doesn’t make it through during the live stream is then sent immediately afterwards when the handset doesn’t have the pressure of having to live stream and display video at the same time. → Read More
Linksify has announced that it has raised half a million dollars in seed funding from entrepreneur / angel investor Jon Fisher and the startup’s founder Tony Wu (a former business associate of Fisher). The company is also launching its contact information sharing tool in beta today.
Billed as the ‘last address book you’ll ever need’, the service – which looks and feels remarkably like it was built in the late nineties – promises to give its users complete control over how their information is shared all while respecting their privacy needs. It does so by giving registered members the option to divide people you know into three groups (acquaintances, personal contacts and work contacts) and assign different sets of permissions to them. → Read More
Yoono, a nifty IE and Firefox plug-in that serves as both a social network aggregator and media hub, is launching a desktop version of their browser sidebar. Yoono basically aggregates and centralizes your online profiles, including IM tools like Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk and AIM as well as a wide variety of social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, Friendfeed and more. The startup also recently launched the ability to share pages and video/images in addition to real-time search capabilities powered by OneRiot.
The new desktop app, which is available for both Windows and Mac, has the same experience as the browser add-on except in a standalone product. The app is powered by Mozilla’s cross platform xulrunner technology (the same technology Firefox is built on), which is refreshing considering all of the Adobe Air apps out there. Yoono says that using xulrunner made since giving its history as a Firefox add on and the ease of porting. → Read More
Pittsburgh-based ticketing startup ShowClix recently raised Series A funding from Pittsburgh Equity Partners (PEP), a newly established venture capital firm with a focus on seed and early-stage information technology and life sciences investments in the region.
The amount invested was undisclosed, but as several blogs noted an SEC filing at the time the announcement was first made revealed that the company at the time had brought in $570,000 of an $850,000 round. Co-founder Joshua Dziabiak now says the round ultimately totaled ‘between $750k and $1.5M’. → Read More
This is a guest post by Nicolas Holzapfel of stealth mode startup Yoomoot. Throughout the summer we’re running guest posts we like – exclusive to TechCrunch Europe – written by people on the tech scene in Europe. If you’d like to contribute get in touch.
Widget developer JS-Kit recently proclaimed the “death of comments”. How so? By way of its innovative comment management system Echo, that’s how. This would-be executioner pulls together disparate comments across the Web about a particular article and places them amid the conventional comments below the article. If it takes off, popular sites like TechCrunch could end up with hundreds if not thousands of additional comments. And therein lies the problem. How many of us can be bothered to read through more than the first few dozen or so comments on an article? → Read More
Major Chinese news portal 163.com is reporting [Google machine translation] that Apple has finally signed a deal with China Unicom to bring the iPhone 3G to mainland China in October. This is huge news for Apple, which is now to enter a market with around 700 million mobile phone users, the biggest in the world (US: around 270 million).
Following months of negotiations between Apple and China Unicom, “industry insiders” are reportedly expecting an official announcement to be made by the country’s second biggest mobile telecommunications company tomorrow in Hong Kong. → Read More
A few days ago, I wrote about the frustration over the delay in approving the new Facebook app for the iPhone. That should launch any day now, and it’s a good thing because as soon as it does, the anticipation can start for another must-have app: Boxcar 2.0.
For those unfamiliar with Boxcar, you’ve been missing out. I’ve been using the original version since it launched as my go-to push notification app for Twitter updates, and it has worked beautifully. But with 2.0, it get even better. Like, an insane amount better.
Previously, Boxcar allowed you to get Twitter @replies and direct messages pushed for your iPhone. Version 2.0 expands that to include all of the tweets for people you follow, if you want them. And it supports multiple Twitter accounts now. And it also allows you to push any new trending topic on Twitter right to your phone. Best of all, it allows you to push results from any Twitter search query directly to your phone. Yes, track is back, and it’s better than ever.
But that’s just what it can do with Twitter. → Read More
