iSync 3.1.0, to be shipped with Snow Leopard, has struck another blow against Palm. What is it this time? They’ve removed Palm HotSync support, relegating thousands of Centro, Treo, Zire, Tungsten, and Palm Pilot users to the darkest corners of Obsoletia. When will this arms race end? → Read More
When Twitter decided to start using Bit.ly as its default URL-shortener, usage exploded. But the service was able to handle the rise in usage, and has been steadily adding new features. And now other major players on the web are rewarding that reliability by also embracing it. Today on its blog, Bit.ly details a few of the new API uses and partnerships that they’ve been cooking up.
The biggest is probably Google Reader, which now makes use of Bit.ly shortened links for its new ability to send stories to Twitter. Another big one is CBS, which not uses Bit.ly to share much of its content and keeps a running list of stats here. SixApart has also added a new feature to its TypePad beta test which allows any post to also generate a Bit.ly URL. This will apparently become a part of the full product in the fall. And John Resig of Mozilla used the Bit.ly API to build a new retweet button, similar to the ones you see all over the web powered by TweetMeme, but this is independent. → Read More
July was a pretty monumental month for Twitter in terms of news and events. The microblogging site got a homepage redesign, officially adopted the word Tweet on its site, launched Twitter 101 and had a pretty serious document leak fiasco. And all of that took place in the only half of the month!
Which is why it may be unsurprising that Twitter passed a fairly big milestone sometime in July: Twitter passed 50 million unique visitors worldwide, according to comScore, reaching 51.6 million unique visits worldwide at the end of the month. Twitter added 7.1 unique visitors from June to July. Growth dipped slightly, with visits increasing by 16 percent from June. Twitter’s visits grew 19 percent from May to June, and saw 16 percent growth from April to May. But Twitter’s highest rate of worldwide growth may have been in the month of March, when the site grew by 95 percent, from 9.8 million to 19.1 million visits, according to comScore. June’s number may have been buoyed by the Iran election protests. → Read More
What fun is going to the beach if you can’t bring a half-dozen portable electronic devices along with you? And let’s not forget how difficult it is to keep all those juice boxes cool. Yes, I said juice boxes. Drinking beer in the daytime makes me sleepy. Anyhoo, this bag features solar charging, speakers, and it’s insulated to keep your favorite libations cold. → Read More
Some people still aren’t sure why Facebook would buy FriendFeed. While few would question the talent of FriendFeed’s team, many still considered it to be a product going nowhere. Think again.
The new July comScore numbers are out, and they’re impressive to say the least for FriendFeed. First of all, its last full independent month saw an all-time high in unique visitors. But the stat that really will blow you away is the average time spent on the site. FriendFeed’s choice to move to a live, constantly updating stream of data was a very good choice, it seems. → Read More
How many times do you think you’ve used a pencil eraser and then brushed off the little rubber bits with your pinky? A million times? — a billion? Well, no more! This invention, while coming about fifty or sixty years too late, will certainly be useful for those of you still using pencils. What’s that? I’m getting reports that no one uses pencils any more, anywhere. That can’t be right. → Read More
So, hotshot, you think just because you follow 300+ people on Twitter, thanks to Tweetdeck, that you’re some sort of super-duper Information Age sage? Slow down, because a recent study, coming out of Stanford, says that multitaskers are no better at processing or retaining information than single-minded non-multitaskers. If you’re trying to process and retain information, then, best to stick to one task at a time. → Read More
We haven’t been posting too much about the N97 Mini, mainly because we think the fact that it exists is a bit silly. We feel that there’s plenty of stuff Nokia could be doing that would be better than remaking the same phone 2-3% smaller. It’s tough to write about it without sounding bitter, and no one likes a bitter blogger – so we’ve just been avoiding it. With that said, there’s probably at least a handful of folks out there reading this who are interested in the N97′s slightly smaller sibling, so we figured you might like to know: after digging up the first promo shot of the Nokia N900 yesterday, BeGeek.fr has followed up with the first promo shot of the N97 Mini. We can’t tell if Nokia’s showing off a funky new mocha color variant here or if the design team just got a bit too much artistic freedom – either way, expect an official announcement next week at Nokia World. → Read More
Wow, that’s quite a lot off the actual price there. If you’re too impatient to wait for the PS3 Slim, or just don’t plan on using more than 40GB of space, this is a pretty unbelievable deal. Free shipping, even! Unfortunately this isn’t one of the PS2-compatible models, so I won’t be picking it up. Still, though. → Read More
Just before Twitter went down today (yup, it was down again), I noticed something strange. Whenever I clicked on any shortened link in my Twitter stream and look at the address bar of my browser, I saw a fleeting click tracker before it redirected to the final site. It looked something like this: “http://twitter.com/link_click_count . . .” Others noticed this as well. When Twitter came back up, the redirects were gone. Maybe too many people were clicking on them.
Whether this was just a test or a preview of what’s to come, it suggests that Twitter wants to track all the links people click on the site, which is something you’d think it was doing already. The way that Twitter was doing the redirects was a bit clumsy. You actually ended up being redirected twice. First by the original URL shortener like bit.ly or ow.ly, and then by Twitter itself. While it only seemed to be happening on Twitter.com itself, the redirects worked for any short link including bit.ly, Tinyurl, ow.ly, and so on.
Why would Twitter be tracking links all of a sudden? → Read More
A reader sent in links to two identical Microsoft marketing sites. One is a standard U.S./English version, the other in Polish.
The image is identical, except Microsoft has removed the head of the black man in the U.S. version and photoshopped in a white guy’s head instead. The Asian man and white woman made the cut to the Polish site unscathed. Clicking back and forth between the two pages is actually kind of creepy.
The original model’s hand was left in the Polish version of the ad.
Photoshop Disasters, which also wrote about this, has some great comments: → Read More
As you settle back into the dorms and sift through syllabi while searching for drink specials from the local pub, you also should put in some time improving your social life. The fall is a great time to lay a solid foundation of dating success on campus. To provide some tips on turbocharging your dating life, we turned to Neil Strauss, author of the international bestseller The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists and founder of the Stylelife Academy. → Read More
I’m now ripping off Ron and Fez bits wholesale. In a gripping discussion today, the radio show debated the following question that’s 100 percent relevant to our interests here at CrunchGear: what invention has changed the most since its inception? → Read More
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No. This is the PooTrap, an elaborate apparatus that you strap to your dog. It holds a bag in place right about where the you-know-what comes out of the you-know-where. It costs between $30 and $40 depending on the size of your dog. → Read More
Last May, we got our first taste of Mag.ma, the new video portal to come from Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron. We’ve been tracking the site since then, and it appeared at our Real-Time Crunchup last month, but it’s remained in private beta. Today, Mag.ma finally opens up to the public.
As we’ve noted before, most people will use Mag.ma as a great place to kill time. The site presents users with around one hundred video thumbnails on a single page, with hot videos from Twitter, YouTube, Digg, a variety of other services and the web at large. But despite a wide selection of content, the site manages not to overwhelm users. Mag.ma also has a heavy emphasis on stat tracking (you can watch a ticker count up as more people watch a certain video). There’s also a strong discovery component that lets you see videos other members on the site are recommending. → Read More
Please turn your attention to Rolling Stone, where an article about a blind, lonely phreaker is currently tearing up the charts. That is to say, it’s an article worth your time, certainly better than refreshing drudgereport.com for the thousandth time in a day. → Read More
Are you ready for Windows 7? Remember, you need go out and get a really nice computer with a nice monitor and lots of hard drive space – basically you’re going to have to get a Mac. Don’t worry, though. It’s easy to switch.
Parallels is essentially a virtual machine that can run almost any version of Windows. The $100 software and hardware solution lets you drag everything from your old Windows PC to your Mac and then run almost all your apps natively under OS X. Viola! → Read More
Today Rackspace has announced the launch of Cloud Tools, an online portal for sharing tools, applications and services built by the company’s strategic partners and independent developers.
With the new service, RackSpace is looking to connect customers with companies and third parties building upon the RackSpace cloud platform in useful ways. Tools and apps can be searched by name or feature and visitors can rate the tools and post comments before being directed to the strategic partner’s website for download.
Cloud Tools features more than 15 strategic partners and community projects including Cyberduck, Django Cumulus, Jungle Disk, Mixpanel, RightScale, and several more. Some tools are available free of charge while others can be purchased for a fee established by the developer. Building off the recent API and open source news, the release reflects a continued effort on behalf of RackSpace to improve the cloud environment and keep the platform open. → Read More
Remember those wicked RE: The Darkside Chronicle Zombie tees that Capcom was giving away at Comic-Con earlier this year? We didn’t make it to San Diego either. But because we kick ass, the fine folks at Capcom have hooked us up with five zombie tees to give away. → Read More
Gideon Yu, the former Facebook CFO unceremoniously shown the door in late March, has joined Khosla Ventures as a General Partner, we’ve heard from multiple sources.
Prior to Facebook, Yu has held positions at Yahoo (SVP Finance), YouTube (CFO) and, most recently, a short stint as a partner at Sequoia Capital. He is credited with being one of the main architects of the landmark $1.65 billion Google acquisition of YouTube in 2006.
Khosla Ventures has been in the news recently – they are raising another $1 billion to fund investments in a wide variety of startups (Internet, cleantech, mobile, fundamental science, etc.). A list of their investments is on their Crunchbase profile. → Read More
