If you find yourself in the overlapping section of the Venn diagram containing people who like camping and people who like coffee, you may very well begin figuring out how you’re going to find $45 to buy Brunton’s Flip N’ Drip Coffee Maker when it comes out next February. → Read More
http://media.rockstargames.com/products/rockstar/mediaplayer/RockstarMediaPlayer.swf Coming to an iPhone/iPod Touch near you this fall from the creators of the greatest game in history (Editors Note: Well, at least the greatest game in history involving hookers and drugs), Grand Theft Auto, is Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. I guess it’s going to be an exact port of the DS title. Are you excited? → Read More
A veritable cornucopia of ultra-thin laptops is expected from the likes of Asus, Acer, and MSI in the near future. The computers will use Intel’s forthcoming low and ultra-low voltage Penryn CPUs, the Celeron 743 and the SU2300. → Read More
While Google Translate is certainly not perfect in many of its translations, the site is undoubtedly an incredibly useful tool when trying to interpret a word, phrase or entire site in a different language. Today, Google has added nine more languages to Google Translate: Afrikaans, Belarusian, Icelandic, Irish, Macedonian, Malay, Swahili, Welsh and Yiddish, bringing the number of languages that are supported up to 51.
Google says that with the latest addition, the site now supports all 23 of the official EU languages. And following the events in Iran during the elections, Google added Persian (Farsi) to Google Translate. Google warns users that quality of the translation for the new languages is still basic and may have some glitches. → Read More
Oh, Gene Munster. You keep popping up like the loose Cheerios my nine-month-old daughter drops at breakfast. What are you up to this time, you little scamp?
Munster of Piper Jaffray “predicts” that AT&T will lose its iPhone exclusivity by the end of 2010, thereby rendering the company impotent and insolvent. Some contenders for the iPhone throne include Verizon. This ignores the fact that AT&T is fighting like a champ to keep the iPhone until 2011 but it seems the popular perception of AT&T as a pile of fail may put a damper on Apple’s wish to stay put. → Read More
The PS3 Slim literally took the world by storm last week, shaking the Heavens themselves in the process. But this new development warrants our attention: is the PS3 Slim slower than the PS3 Fat (or is that Phat? Help me, Internet.)? A bunch of videos posted to YouTube certainly seem to indicate as such. → Read More
Obvious disclaimer: All of us here on the Crunch team are at all times primarily concerned with the well-being of all our friends, family members, and the millions of unrelated noobs who call Southern California home. However, as a site dedicated to bringing you, our favorite people, as much relevant news re: the mobile world as possible, we think it’s also important to provide these quasi-public service announcements from time to time as well. As of this morning, August 31, 2009, the incredibly dangerous wildfires burning in Los Angeles county have basically doubled in size, claiming 21 homes and 2 firefighters’ lives. Currently, firefighters are doing all they can to quell the raging fires, which are also threatening cell phone and TV / radio broadcast towers, as well as a historic observatory, situated on Mt. Wilson. In order to try and save these vital communications towers and famed observatory, five engine crews were placed in the fire’s path last night. For more, please tune into your local news station for updates. image via claimsmantoo → Read More
Great article over at Edge Online for anyone interested in the early days of EA’s John Madden Football franchise. Did you know that one of the first versions of the game was initially 7-on-7 due to memory limitations? Madden himself put the kibosh on that one right away, saying, “What’s this seven-on-seven? This isn’t football. If my name’s going to be on something it’s got to be 11-on-11.” → Read More
Hey, all: I, John Biggs, will be in Israel from the Sept 5 through the 10th. I’d love to meet up with some great start-ups in the Jerusalem/Tel Aviv area. I’m most interested in the great gadgets coming out of there but I’m happy to sit down with local folks to talk web services.
If you’d like to sponsor an hour of drinks, please let me know. Either way, RSVP to john@crunchgear.com with the subject line “RSVP ISRAEL” or visit the Event Page at Facebook.
UPDATE – We’re teaming up with the Tel Aviv Beer Tweet-up on the same night at the Dancing Camel Club from 8pm to 11:30pm. → Read More
We’ve just received a pair of screenshots that may be of Google’s upcoming Chrome OS operating system. Google announced the entirely browser-based OS in July, and since then a number of alleged screenshots have popped up that have ranged from laughably bad to somewhat plausible. Because we haven’t seen any confirmed screenshots from Google, anyone with a copy of Photoshop can throw together some Google icons and claim to have the goods, so take these with a grain of salt.
The screenshots below depict Google’s Chrome browser, with a dock of unnecessarily large app icons lining the right side of the screen (including what appears to be a Google media player app). Thing is, Google Earth, which is included in the dock, primarily uses a downloadable client, as does Picasa. This doesn’t really mesh well with the fact that Chrome OS is a browser OS. On the other hand, Google does offer a browser plug-in for Google Earth, and you can use a web version of Picasa to browse albums, so they’re still within the realm of possibility. → Read More
Man – Chinese infotainment portal Sina has really had things locked down lately when it comes to getting crystal clear shots of unreleased devices. They got a full hands on gallery with the LB40 Chocolate two days before it was announced, and now they’re following up with an exhaustive (as in 39 blur-free snaps) gallery of Dell’s Android-powered Mini 3i. It looks like Dell’s done a bit of Android theme tweaking here, though it seems that its mostly just color changes and new widgets. We’ve torn through the gallery a few times in search of a 3.5mm jack (we have a bit of a thing for’em), to no avail – let us know if you spot one. [Via EngadgetMobile] → Read More
Maybe it’s because they are cheap. Maybe it’s because they are small. Or maybe it’s just because people don’t need computers for much more than Net access these days. But the popularity of netbook computers keeps growing.
In the second quarter, netbooks accounted for 22.5 of all portable computer shipments worldwide, according to market forecaster DisplaySearch (which is part of the NPD Group). That is up from 5.6 percent a year ago, and 17.8 percent in the first quarter of 2009. → Read More
Tesla Motors has hired Ricardo Reyes away from Google as the company’s first Vice President of Communications. Reyes is currently the head of global communications and public affairs at YouTube. Reyes will officially join Tesla on September 14.
Tesla has been on a roll recently. They announced profitability, secured $465 million in government loans to build their next car plant and raised another $50 million in equity from Daimler that valued the company at $550 million. → Read More
Sorry, folks. If you’ve been anxiously awaiting the launch of the Nikon Coolpix S100pj projector camera, you’re going to have to wait a little longer. The original plan according to the press release was to bring the camera to the market in September, but that doesn’t seem to be the case any longer. Now the camera is going to launch on October 23rd. → Read More
You know what Canada looks like? It looks like the best part of town – where everyone is cool and gets drunk all the time without hangovers and where you used to go to raves when you were like 16 and now when you go back the rave places have grown up with you and become chocolate shops and classic book stores – but it looks like that all over the country. → Read More
Big news (not really) this AM from Olympus with the announcement of the E-600 DSLR. Looks like another entry-level(ish) digital SLR. Big notables for the 12.3-megapixel shooter include a swiveling 2.7-inch LCD and slew of fancy art filters. That’s seriously about it, folks. The E-600 coupled with a 14-42mm f3.5/5.6 kit lens will retail for $600 in November. → Read More
SanDisk has revved its line of tiny Sansa Clip players — now called the Sansa Clip+ for those of you keeping score at home — and, thankfully, hasn’t changed too much from the already-great device (see our Sansa Clip review here). → Read More
NEC announced a total of seven “green” video projectors for the Japanese market on Friday [JP]. Each has different specs, but the one characteristic all devices have in common is the low level of energy consumption, which stands at just 0.6W in standby mode (down from 3W for the previous projector series from that company). → Read More
Last week, the Italian government began an investigation into Google and Google News about allegations of anti-competitive behavior. (For more details, read Google’s initial response or Danny Sullivan’s take). Italian newspaper publishers claim that Google News is stealing readers from them who skim the headlines on Google News and never bother to click through. It is a familiar refrain, to which the obvious response is: If newspapers want readers to click on their headlines, maybe they should write better headlines.
But implicit in these arguments, and an investigation into how Google News is somehow stifling competition in the Italian news industry is that Google News dominates the news in Italy, at least online. That is not the case. According to comScore, the Italian audience of Google News is smaller than at least two of the largest Italian newspaper sites, La Republicca and Corriere Della Sera. In July, Google News had 2.4 million Italian readers versus 3.8 million for both of those Italian newspaper sites. (These numbers reflect only visitors from Italy). → Read More
Fans of the television show Lost will remember that a big part of season 2 revolved around the pushing of a button. Every 108 minutes you had to enter numbers and push the button or the world might end, was the line of thought. Of course, as time went on, people started to wonder if it wasn’t just some psychological experiment. A new iPhone game that involves pushing a button, is a psychological exercise, of sorts.
Called Button, the game is about as simple as they come. There is a big button on the screen, and when it lights up, you push it. So why would anyone want to play that game? No, the world isn’t going to end if you don’t, but you will potentially miss out on some free prizes. And pushing the button may just help you get through some mundane tasks throughout your day as well. → Read More
