Using the Gas Cubby iPhone app to increase your fuel economy and keep your vehicle properly maintained can save you money and help the environment… but, if you’ve learned anything from CrunchGear, it’s that saving money isn’t much fun unless you can blow it on something cool and completely over the top. Well, one lucky CrunchGear reader gets to have their cake and eat it too. App Cubby, the developer of Gas Cubby, is giving away a Viper SmartStart kit to one lucky CrunchGear reader. If you own a car and an iPhone, surely you’ve heard about and have been lusting after Viper’s new technology that allows you to lock/unlock, open the trunk, and even start your car right from your iPhone. → Read More
As AOL prepares to spin off from Time Warner early next month, it is going through a slight rebranding. The AOL logo is changing to lowercase with a period (Aol.). The new branding campaign that is about to launch features the logo revealed as white space inside different images and pictures (see below).
The video above is a sneak peak of AOL’s brand advertising campaign, which again reveals the new AOL logo over different images that the company wants to associate the brand with. The attempt here is to try to portray AOL as trendy, vibrant, and interesting—as far as artsy splashes, a headbanger and an acrobatic trio doing flips off one of their own manages to do that. The point is that AOL wants to reveal itself in unexpected ways.
It does need to reboot its image, I’ll give it that much. → Read More
Phil Schiller, Apple’s SVP of Worldwide Product Marketing, is back on his one-man crusade to defend the App Store from the latest wave of criticism pointed in its direction.
This time, Apple is having to battle the news of Facebook’s all-star developer Joe Hewitt quitting the platform, more high profile app rejections, and the rise of Android as an increasingly viable alternative to the iPhone. Schiller has granted BusinessWeek’s Arik Hesseldahl what the publication says is his first “wide-ranging interview on the matter”. Unfortunately, Schiller doesn’t really say anything to quell the growing unrest in the developer community — instead, he’s offered some finely-tuned PR-speak that will placate the vast majority of iPhone users, who are only vaguely aware of the App Store controversies and just need a reminder that Apple is still one of the good guys. But it may only make developers angrier. → Read More
jQuery is a Javascript library that is used in a large number of web applications and is popular amongst web application developers. It was launched in 2006 by John Resig, and immediately gained a large following due to its lightweight nature and design philosophy. jQuery allows developers to build Javascript web applications easily by abstracting many of the complexities and difficulties. A developer with knowledge of CSS selectors and HTML would easily find their way around jQuery and be able to implement Ajax queries, effects and other tasks with a few lines of code.
A new commercial company called appendTo has launched recently with the goal of providing commercial support, training and development solutions exclusively around jQuery. The company was founded by members of the jQuery development team, and is lead by co-founder and CEO Mike Hostetler, who is both a jQuery core team member and previously a freelance developer/consultant. John Resig is not involved or affiliated with the company, and is employed by Mozilla as a developer. → Read More
[Sweden] The much – perhaps justifiably – hyped music streaming service Spotify has extended its mobile reach significantly today with the release of an app for phones powered by the Nokia-led Symbian operating system.
This follows earlier clients for both iPhone and Android and means that the service will now be accessible on millions more handsets from Nokia, obviously, along with Sony Ericsson and Samsung which also support the platform. → Read More
As rumors continue to swirl around LinkedIn’s possible IPO, the professional social network is steadily adding useful features that help transcend the platform’s technology into other applications. LinkedIn recently launched two-way integration with Twitter and also rolled out a plug-in to pull in your LinkedIn contacts within Microsoft Outlook. And today, LinkedIn is opening up its API to start letting developers make applications that tap into LinkedIn’s social network.
While LinkedIn is releasing 11 different APIs, they fall into three distinct categories. First, developers will be able to let users easily access their information, profiles, connections and messages via oAuth login. The second functionality is to give users the ability to make actionable decisions about information, but letting them message their LinkedIn contacts, post updates, accept contacts and more. And the third piece of the puzzle is search. So developers will now be able to embed LinkedIn search in other applications. The social network’s search engine was re-launched last year and has done over one billion queries in this year alone. → Read More
When it comes to the mobile Web, increasingly there are only two mobile platforms which matter: Apple and Android. According to AdMob’s October, 2009 mobile metrics report, the iPhone/iPod Touch and Android phones accounted for 75 percent of mobile Web traffic in the U.S., as measured by all the mobile ad requests it tracks. That number is up from a combined 65 percent in September, 2009.
The iPhone is miles ahead of everyone else, but Android is quickly rising as a strong second. While Android phones managed to increase their share from 17 percent in September, 2009 to 20 percent in October, 2009, the iPhone and iPod Touch gained even more, going from 48 percent to 55 percent share. Meanwhile, during that same month the Blackberry ‘s mobile Web traffic share went down from 14 percent to 12 percent, and Palm’s webOS shrank from 10 percent to 5 percent (Ouch). → Read More
I’m not really sure if this is good or bad news for end consumers, but a couple of Japanese companies have developed a technology that makes it possible to transmit information from blinking LEDs fixed on advertisements to cell phones – using only light. The companies involved in the development include some big names such as Toshiba or NEC.
With this new system, Japanese cell phone users don’t have to scan the ubiquitous QR codes anymore to access more information on a certain product or to get coupons but can obtain the data without being physically close to the ads. If you have an ad measuring 1sqm and place LEDs on it, for example, the target user can stand as far as five meters away (the distance can be longer in the case of larger ads). If the users are interested in what’s being offered, it’s enough to point the cell phone to the ad to instantly view the information on the screen. → Read More
As a blogger, sometimes the most difficult part of writing a post is contacting the company it is about. First, you either have to search your contact list, or the web, to figure out who to reach out to. And then you might not get a response right away. And finally, if you do get a response, it may include misdirection or less information than you’d like. All of these things led to the idea for a new startup, Plato’s Forms.
To be clear, the communication problems run the other way too. Sometimes companies would love a better way to talk to journalists before they publish a story. Plato’s Forms would offer that communication pipeline. The idea is to make it easier for the two sides to communicate on any given story, so the correct information is shared with the readers. → Read More
When it comes to the mobile Web, increasingly there are only two mobile platforms which matter: Apple and Android. According to AdMob’s October, 2009 mobile metrics report, the iPhone/iPod Touch and Android phones accounted for 75 percent of mobile Web traffic in the U.S., as measured by all the mobile ad requests it tracks. That number is up from a combined 65 percent in September, 2009.
The iPhone is miles ahead of everyone else, but Android is quickly rising as a strong second. While Android phones managed to increase their share from 17 percent in September, 2009 to 20 percent in October, 2009, the iPhone and iPod Touch gained even more, going from 48 percent to 55 percent share. Meanwhile, during that same month the Blackberry ‘s mobile Web traffic share went down from 14 percent to 12 percent, and Palm’s webOS shrank from 10 percent to 5 percent (Ouch). → Read More
Dost thou desire an Android phone in Red Passion or Oiled Bronze? Begin thy journey, brave Sir Knight, to China where you will be able to purchase the Dell Mini 3i with 3.5-inch touchscreen for a few coins of the realm. The Mini 3i, as you’ll recall, is Dell’s first smartphone in almost half a decade and runs the Ophone platform, an Android-based system that will eventually brand most of China Mobile’s phones. → Read More
MOG has set a launch date for its All Access music streaming service: December 2. That’s when you’ll be able to sign up for the hands down best music streaming service on the web. If you’re willing to pay $5/month, that is.
Is it worth it? I’m definitely starting to think so. Partially because of the quality of the product (more on that below), and partially because the free streaming music business model seems to be falling apart. Spotify is delaying U.S. launch, MySpace may move to a subscription service, and the iMeem service, recently acquired by MySpace, may not even be around for much longer. By this time next year there may not be any legal free streaming services left.
But even with free streaming competitors, MOG may be worth it. I’ve been testing the service for a couple of weeks and it is a significantly better user experience than any other music service I’ve tried, including Spotify, MySpace Music and Pandora.
It’s just incredibly easy to search for and discover music, add it to playlists or your library, and start listening.
MOG has released a short video showing the full service (until now we’ve just had two teasers).
The video is below: → Read More
Nintendo started offering a video distribution service for Japanese Wii owners this May, attracting about 800,000 customers by late September in this country. In the same month, Nintendo promised their free channel will be made available to Non-Japanese Wii owners next year, at the same time announcing they’ll start offering paid content (in Japan) very soon. And since the weekend, we have that fee-based streaming video service [JP] over here. → Read More
WinBuyer has just announced that it has raised institutional funding for the first time, to the tune of $6.9 million, in a Series A round led by Pitango Venture Capital and joined by Giza Venture Capital.
The young Israeli company markets a so-called Onsite Comparative Pricing (OCP) application, which aims to help Internet retailers integrate comparison shopping elements straight into their own product pages. → Read More
Now that we’ve all actually seen Chrome OS, the immediate reaction that most are jumping to is that it won’t be killing Windows anytime soon. Obviously. But that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt Microsoft, and apply long-term pressure to the dominant OS. In fact, Google’s positioning for Chrome OS reads like a page out of Apple’s playbook, only from the opposite direction.
Google is aiming Chrome OS right at the bottom of the market. That is to say, cheap computers, netbooks. Apple, of course, takes the opposite approach, targeting the high end of the market with their high-quality and high-margin machines. If Google is successful with its Chrome OS netbooks (let’s call them ChromeBooks), what we could see is the squeezing of Microsoft, an idea I first laid out a month ago. With attacks from the top and bottom, Windows will be relegated to the middle. And ultimately, if Google has its way, marginalized. → Read More
ZURB, a well-regarded interaction design and strategy firm in the San Francisco Bay Area that has in the past done work for eBay, Facebook, Yahoo, Zazzle and many other familiar names, regularly publishes insightful design deconstruction posts for homepages of some of the most popular websites on the net, using its very own Notable app (also see our review of the website feedback tool).
After taking a critical look at CNN.com, MSN.com and Twitter.com, the ZURB team has recently shined its light on TechCrunch.com. And we took notice. → Read More
Web-based productivity suite Zoho is launching a new product today, Zoho Recruit. A niche product, Zoho Recruit, is an application designed to help HR Departments and staffing agencies management recruitment.
Zoho Recruit, which is an offshoot of Zoho People’s recruitment technology, is an Applicant Tracking System that helps staffing agencies and recruiting departments track job openings, resumes, candidates and contacts. The application will source candidates by gathering resumes from multiple sources on the web and includes a technology that will weed out the candidates. → Read More
Apple made it possible for iPhone developers to offer in-app purchase five weeks ago, an option Android devs currently don’t have. But now Shanghai-based mobile technology company Urbian found a work-around to enable in-app purchase, saying they’re the first developers that did. The app in question is Ringz, a puzzle game that’s available for free on the Android market (the iPhone version is in review by the way). → Read More
Annoyed because you have to leave your e-mail inbox every time you would like to respond to someone else’s Facebook status update? Good news: the social network is testing a brand new feature that will enable you to comment on threads by e-mail.
It appears as if the new feature is currently being tested only with a very small subset of users; we haven’t seen it at the bottom of any Facebook notification e-mails yet and there are only about 4 tweets from the past couple of days mentioning the new feature. → Read More
The much hyped music streaming service Spotify has extended its mobile reach significantly today with the release of an app for phones powered by the Nokia-led Symbian operating system.
This follows earlier clients for both iPhone and Android and means that the service will now be accessible on millions more handsets from Nokia, obviously, along with Sony Ericsson and Samsung which also support the platform.
Unfortunately, for once users in the U.S. will have to wait longer as Spotify has delayed the launch of it’s service there until the new year.
Phones powered by Symbian far outstrip the iPhone and Android (for now) in Europe where Spotify is currently available. Today’s release should see the company strike further carrier deals or at least extend their current offering with mobile network 3, leading to more ‘back door’ or ‘feels like free’ premium subscriptions. → Read More
Barcelona, Spain
New York City
San Francisco, CA
