Even after the pre-sale countdown for the Moto CLIQ began this morning, we were left with two burning questions: How much would it cost, and when would we get’em? Fortunately, T-Mobile didn’t leave us hanging for too long. According to the press release that just hit the wire, Moto’s Android-flavored, QWERTY-packin’ baby is going to set us back $200 bucks alongside a two year contact, and will ship out on November 2nd. That price, unfortunately, kills our buzz a bit. While the Cliq looks like a pretty darned decent handset, we were really counting on it coming out on the cheap. Not for our own sake, mind you – but for Android’s. Android needs a good, dirt cheap (Sub-$100, at the most) handset to start winning over the masses. Combine the early rumors that indicated that this would be ultra-budget friendly with the fact that the CLIQ looks a bit.. well, ultra-budget friendly, and we certainly had our hopes high for something low. Oh well. → Read More
Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Vivek Wadhwa, an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Executive in Residence at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa.
Everyone seems to be waiting for the next great discovery which will change the world. But, believe it or not, the next Internet, semiconductor, or breakthrough in MRI technology may already have been discovered. It’s just languishing on the shelves of the university research labs you drive by on your way to work every day. University researchers don’t know how to commercialize their discoveries and smart, hungry entrepreneurs looking to meet the next Larry or Sergey don’t know how to find them. These parallel universes rarely meet (well, except sometimes at Stanford).
In 2007, U.S. universities performed $48.8 billion of research and filed 17,589 U.S. patent applications. In that same year universities received back revenues for licensing and royalties on patents of less than $2 billion. Those revenues include ongoing royalties from all of the research licensed over the past 40 years. The implication is clear. An astonishing amount of promising research is left in the lab.
When I say this to university administrators, they get incredibly defensive (almost like the VC’s I pissed off with my last post.) They rightfully argue that the role of the university is to teach and to add to the world’s knowledge base. The real benefit comes from the students who universities educate, who go and start the Apples and Microsoft’s. No argument there. But we have a goldmine of knowledge and potential innovation locked in our research universities. This goldmine could fuel the next two decades of economic growth. It is time to mine this goldmine. → Read More
Storage is cheap, and just keeps getting cheaper. I remember buying my first 250 megabyte hard drive, and paying just under a dollar per meg. Now we’re approaching multi-terabyte drives at retail stores for extremely reasonable prices. The age old problem, though, is how to protect all that precious data. RAID solutions have been around for a long time, but the consumer-grade products haven’t been all that great, and the commercial-grade products have been way too expensive. Things are starting to change, though, and the iStoragePro iT4UFER is a good indicator of what’s to come. Read on for a complete review, and a chance to win a $100 Starbucks gift card! → Read More
The general consensus online is that everyone want a tablet computer with a small footprint and simple design. Right? Well, Hanvon (who?) might be onto something. The 8.9-inch slate device is somewhat hot. It has a glossy black front screen while the rest is clad in aluminum. The Windows 7 install supports multi-touch gestures and seems responsive. Specific details about CPU type and battery life aren’t mentioned in the video, which leaves us hoping for the best. The video is after the jump. → Read More
Apple has apparently told its direct-sales partners like the Apple Stores not to order new iMacs or Mac Minis and don’t expect any more shipments either. This can mean only one of two things: Apple is going bankrupt or there are new models coming real soon. → Read More
It was only a couple months ago that you all thrilled to the reasonably fast and extremely loud video adventures of Mister Ha. VholdR decided that 720p wasn’t good enough for rattly rolls through Stuyvesant Town, so they’ve updated the ContourHD to go up to 1080p. Other than the resolution upgrade there doesn’t seem to be anything changed, but to hear Peter tell it, that’s not such a bad thing. → Read More
On January 22, 1984 during the third quarter of the SuperBowl, Apple broadcast one of the most famous television commercials of all time. Based on a dystopian future George Orwell described in his novel 1984, the ad features a procession of soulless drones trudging into a large room to listen to the unquestioned words of their dictator whose face is being projected on a large screen. Moments later, a beautiful woman bounds into the room, evading capture by armed guards by only a few meters, and hurls a large hammer into the screen that explodes in a dazzling display of light. And so we were introduced to the Macintosh, Apple’s new weapon to take on the monolithic IBM.
What a difference 25 years can make. Now Apple has grown from underdog to a tyrant in its own right, preventing other devices from tapping into its iTunes software and restricting what users can install on the iPhones that they’ve purchased. And doubleTwist, which makes software that lets you use iTunes seamlessly with other devices, is calling it out in spectacular fashion. They’ve just unveiled their new commercial (embedded below) that’s nearly a shot-for-shot remake, featuring an army of iPod-wearing clones sitting in silence as their master — sporting Steve Jobs’ familiar round glasses — commands that “no other choices shall detract from our glory”. → Read More
No time for pleasantries here, as this is probably going to sell out quickly. First, Dell is selling the Wii for $175 with free next-day shipping. Second, if you search for Dell through Bing.com and use Bing’s cash back program, you can get 15% of your purchase back. People over on FatWallet are reporting getting the deal down to around $150 or so, although your mileage may vary depending on your state’s sales tax. Use this link for Bing and click on the top light blue banner (it says Dell.com – Official Site). Good luck! → Read More
Fancy yourself a system builder, do you? As long as you’re willing to do a clean install of Windows 7, you can grab a full OEM version for cheaper than the same retail upgrade version. Newegg has rolled out its selection of Windows 7 OEM packages (there are preorder discounts available until October 20th), so let’s take a look at what’s available. → Read More
T-Mobile’s got a bit of a thing for Android, and they’re not afraid to show it to the world. Since the fledgling OS debuted on its G1 almost exactly a year ago (Sept. 23, 2008), T-Mobile has launched more Android handsets than all of the other carriers combined – and they’re about to add one more. → Read More
According to this weeks issue of Amateur Photographer, Canon will not be attending PMA 2010. The company is apparently shifting focus away from niche trade shows in order to focus shows like CES that reach more consumers. After all, that’s the way Canon’s products are going anyway.
We’ve seen a huge shift in the last five years as the DSLR has moved from the prosumer market to clearly an everyday Joe-type camera. Sure, there will always be high-end products which could be showcased at shows like PMA, but money is tight for everyone including the photography giant and so they need to focus on shows with the furthest reach. → Read More
Oh my God is that the HP Pavilion dv3, complete with a fancy touchscreen? Oh my God it is! And is that the Engadget watermark? Oh my God it is! Man those guys are crazy! → Read More
Congrats, Columbia, South Carolina! Your town city is the proud new recipient of T-Mobile’s (slowly) expanding national 3G mobile service! Now your citizens have no excuse not to stream your own favorite son’s show, The Colbert Report, to their mobile devices. Or, you know, porn. → Read More
Yesterday, when I wrote that Tweetie was the best iPhone Twitter client not everyone agreed. Fair enough, there are a few other really great ones including Birdfeed (which we’ve covered here) and Echofon (the app formerly known as TwitterFon). And the team behind Echofon has today rolled something that puts it ahead of Tweetie in at least one regard: A native Mac client that syncs with the iPhone client.
While Tweetie does have a (very nice) Mac client, there is no syncing between it and the iPhone version just yet. It is coming, but Echofon has beaten them to the punch. This puts in in the league with TweetDeck, which also has a desktop and iPhone client that sync, but Echofon is nicer because it’s a native Mac app rather than running on Adobe Air. (Seesmic also has an iPhone app in the works that will sync with its desktop client, though that is again, Air-based.) → Read More
Jeremy “The Animal” Horowitz just posted a list of exciting new rumors about the iPad including the announce date – around January 19, just in time to relegate CES news to the dustbin of history – and that it will be available in May. The device is just awaiting Steve Jobs’ signature on the dotted line.
There will be two devices, a 3G and a non-3G version and the resolution will be 720p or so on 10.7-inch screen. It will also run iPhone OS and have dedicated media systems as well as an ebook reader built in. → Read More
Deftly dodging the netbook moniker, Toshiba has announced its line of Satellite T100 ultra low voltage machines. They’ll be available on October 22nd with 11.6-inch or 13.3-inch displays and over nine hours of battery life. → Read More
It’s all a little unseemly, if you ask me. Last week, Nielsen and Facebook declared that they were “In A Relationship” together with a new product Nielsen is rolling out called BrandLift, which is supposed to measure brand awareness of ads on the social network with opt-in polls. Almost immediately after the two companies announced their strategic love affair, Nielsen started putting out glowing reports about Facebook and how much time people are spending on social networks.
Ads on social networks don’t perform as well as ads on other parts of the Web, but there’s tons of cheap inventory (i.e., pageviews), so advertisers don’t have much choice but to be there. Anything that can help justify their spending 119 percent more than last year on social network ads (Nielsen) is good for Facebook. → Read More
Boom! Looks like Moto CLIQ pamphlet that leaked out a few days ago was spot on. The pamphlet claimed that pre-orders for Motorola’s first ‘Droid handset would begin on Oct. 19th – and sure enough, T-mobile just started the official countdown. There isn’t much in terms of new information, but hey – at least now we know when we’ll be able to throw some money at T-mobile! [Via TmoNews] → Read More
Panasonic’s Let’s Note (aka Toughbook) series is the favorite choice among many Japanese hackers. And today the company announced [JP] two new notebooks from the series with Windows 7 on board. Panasonic says their 16 hours of battery life is unmatched in the industry. → Read More
Dogster has never been a Web 2.0 darling. At first glance a social network for pets isn’t the most innovative idea, and its audience is limited to the kinds of wackos who make name tags for their dogs at conferences or create elaborate fictional personalities for their cats.
But with the benefit of hindsight, Dogster has done two things very, very right: It never raised venture funding and never relied on an ad network for revenues. The result is its network of sites– Dogster, Catster and Snuzzy– that focused on maximizing revenues early on instead of aiming for user growth for the sake of user growth. While many other Web 2.0 names are struggling to raise more money to stay in business, Dogster has been profitable since the second quarter of 2007 and is solidly in control of its own destiny. (Full disclosure: Michael Arrington was a very early angel investor. His statement about his investments is here.)
But there’s a problem. Dogster is still a small site and even happy advertisers will only continue to pay so much to reach the same users. So Dogster has solved that by deciding to become in essence the thing that it always argued startups shouldn’t work with: Ad resellers. → Read More
