Yo, there’s a Woot Off going on right now. Hit me up if a LeakFrog lands on the auction block. I need one. → Read More
Some crazy programmers have overclocked the Droid to 1.1GHz, making it faster than the Nexus one. The Droid usually runs at about 600MHz so bumping it up to 1.1 was fairly dangerous. However, with a little tweaking the boys at AllDroid were able to find a stable speed at about 800MHz. → Read More
eBay this morning announced that it will introduce free auction listings and reduced listing fees for fixed-priced items in the U.S., starting March 30.
The e-commerce giant says the ‘success-based’ pricing is similar to changes implemented by eBay in Europe, changes that have self-reportedly driven strong growth for sellers in markets such as the U.K. and Germany. → Read More
While Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have just begun to tap into the realtime web, a few startups, such as OneRiot and Collecta, have been innovating around realtime search for some time. Today, Collecta is launching a widget builder to help spread its realtime search results around the web.
Users can easily create a widget by entering the desired search terms in Collecta’s widget creator. You can then grab the code and embed it on any site or blog. The widget will provide realtime streaming content on the search terms, collecting content from a network of more than 10 million social media and news sites, including Twitter, WordPress, Flickr, The Associated Press, CNN, Reuters, and more. Collecta also allows users to customize the header, control the scroll rate, and link to an external style sheet to integrate the widget with their website’s look and feel. → Read More
In my last post, I discussed how the gap between the web and enterprise-computing worlds has narrowed. Some of the Valley’s developers are now building web-based systems that make old-world transaction processing seem like child’s play. After all, Twitter processes more transactions per day (in the form of messages) than the systems of many large corporations process in a month. Applications that would take years to design and develop can now be built in weeks.
I called on Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to rescue the California government—to help rebuild its legacy systems. I also went out on a limb and “bet” that an unemployment check-processing system that California State had budgeted $50 million to upgrade could be rebuilt from scratch for a tenth of the cost, in a fraction of the time. → Read More
Remember the dustup last summer over Apple’s rejection of the Google Voice app for the iPhone? Everyone was pointing fingers and even the FCC got involved. Michael was so upset that he quit the iPhone rather than give up his Google Voice. Well, now he can come back because Google Voice is finally on the iPhone via its browser, and Apple can’t really do anything about it..
Google Voice will become available today for both the iPhone and Palm Pre/Pixi via a new mobile Website which will go live later today at http://m.google.com/voice. The new Google Voice mobile site shows your inbox with transcribed calls, which you can play from the browser. You can also send SMS messages or dial from the browser. The application ends up making a local call through your cell phone to Google Voice, which then routes your call through its own lines. When someone gets the call, they see your Google Voice number instead of your AT&T number. And when you get a voicemail, a notification even pops up on your iPhone with the transcribed message (through SMS). → Read More
A Japanese company called Zeon claims it has developed a film for the polarizing plates of LCD screens that boosts picture contrast by more than an order of magnitude. The company is already selling films for those plates to LCD TV makers like Samsung whose screens are based on vertical alignment technology. It produces films for OLED screens, too.
Zeon’s new, so-called phase difference film, however, is made from Cyclo Olefin Polymer, which makes it suitable for LCD TVs based on in-plane-switching (IPS) technology. Makers relying on IPS technology are Panasonic or Hitachi, for example. The new Zeon film inhibits the diffusion of light from the backlight. As a result, viewers get to see clearer pictures. → Read More
App store analytics company Distimo has released its December report on mobile apps, this time zooming in on the physical location of publishers in Google Android Market, and how the prices of their apps compares to those of developers in other countries.
Distimo found that publishers in the Euro zone (Austria, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands and Spain) tend to price their applications higher than those in the United Kingdom, the U.S. and Japan.
The average price of an Android app published by a developer in Europe is $4.42, which is 49% higher than publishers located in the United States ($2.96). For comparison, publishers in Japan price apps $2.28 on average, while the United Kingdom comes out at an average price of $3.31. → Read More
A tweet posted on Twitter account @Media_Markt_de resulted in a flurry of blog posts on leading tech news sites, reporting on possible confirmation of the existence and indicative pricing of the upcoming Apple tablet (including our own CrunchGear), albeit cautiously warning that there was something fishy there, considering the high pricing.
Turns out the Twitter account was indeed a fake. German electronics retailer Media Markt told IT news site Golem (in German) that the Twitter account does not belong to them at all. → Read More
I’ve got a feeling something interesting is happening to the way real estate operates online in the UK. Anecqdotal evidence is emerging that social networks like Facebook and less conventional startups are perhaps starting to find the chink in the armour of the traditional property listing market here.
In particular, Facebook Marketplace is starting to be used by niche poperty agencies like Pimlico Flats, more successfully than the usual online suspects like Craigslist and Gumtree. That latter site has had problems with other aspects of its site like, having to dump dating because of spam and scams. The same problems are plaguing Craigslist in the UK, and this is something that Pimlico Flats picks up on in a blog post on the subject. The ability to verify Facebook users turns out to weed out the scammers.
At the same time, although findaproperty and rightmove remain strong, less conventional sites like Globrix, Nestoria, Zoopla (see below) and even niche social networks like Asmallworld are being used. → Read More
Talk of the Apple Tablet is in full swing as the wide world of web is in a frenzy over the upcoming Apple event tomorrow. Most of the discussion has centered around features: how will it use multi-touch? will it have a camera? what kind of OS will it run? But one thing that matters perhaps more than features is what kind of apps the tablet will have and what developers think about the product. Appcelerator, a company that provides web developers with the tools to build native mobile and desktop applications, has released a report that might give us some insight into what developers are thinking about the device. The results are clear: Appcelerator’s 550+ developer respondents are overwhelmingly positive about the Apple Tablet. 90% of them said they were “very interested in building at least one Apple Tablet app within a year.” Furthermore, when asked about developer interest in the Apple Tablet as compared with other mobile operating systems, 58% of developers were “very interested” in developing for the platform. → Read More
On Wednesday, U.S. President Barack Obama will deliver his State of the Union speech, which will be broadcast live on YouTube’s CitizenTube channel as well as on The White House’s brand new iPhone app.
Google is stepping up its game, as it will also give YouTube users the opportunity to ask Obama some follow-up questions in video or text.
On Wednesday night at 9 p.m. ET, during the live broadcast of the State of the Union on Citizentube, YouTube will be opening up a special Moderator series for citizens to submit questions. → Read More
Bad news for Asus, the EEE Keyboard that still hasn’t been released yet was beaten to market by a clone. The knockoff version is made by the Chinese company Great Wall, and while the clone version did beat the original to market, there are some serious reasons to wait until Asus releases their version. → Read More
Timex launched a new GPS watch recently, and while it’s intended for athletes who require more exact data when training, the new Ironman Global Trainer uses some pretty high end GPS technology in order to accurately track pace, distance, and heart rate. → Read More
A TechCrunch reader informs us that Google Kuwait has replaced its usual logo with a doodle one, as the company often does for special occasions in specific countries or on Google.com.
Google is currently putting the spotlight on Kuwait’s National Day, as evidenced by the file name (kuwaitnatlday10-hp.gif) and where clicking the logo takes you (translation).
The only problem: Kuwait’s National Day isn’t January 25 or 26, but February 25. → Read More
[Norway] Browser maker Opera this morning released their latest State of the Mobile Web report, this time zooming in on the rising trend of social networking on the go. For the first time, Facebook comes out as the most-visited social network on the mobile Web, but Twitter‘s growth has surged even faster in 2009.
According to the report, unique users of Facebook grew more than 600% during 2009, helping the site surpass VKontakte, the Russian social network that was formerly the most popular among Opera Mini users (the mobile browser is quite popular in Russia and Eastern Europe).
Twitter saw its usage increase more than any other social network, surging more than 2800% in just one year. → Read More
As some people noticed, at approximately 10:30 pm PST on Monday evening the main site in the TechCrunch Network – techcrunch.com – was hacked and redirected. The site was back up briefly at 11:30 pm but shortly went down again. As of 2:00 am, the site is back up and appears to be stable.
At this point we’re still gathering information on how the site was compromised, and will update this post with additional information. → Read More
Here are some choice stories from Monday:
Contest: Show us your remote office
The LG Serie 1 Retro Classic TV is the definition of retrosexy
Fast food and donut USB sticks → Read More
Researchers at Canada’s Queen’s University have been working on the most seemingly harmless of technologies, board games. They are taking a little different approach from the Microsoft Surface gaming project though. → Read More
I don’t think it’s too controversial to say that the PC version of AAA games often ends up being the definitive one. Tycho said as much in today’s Penny Arcade news post, and I think in many cases it’s true. Better graphics, updates and occasional free DLC, and other perks can even make a game worth buying twice. Assassin’s Creed II is one I’ve been waiting on for a while now, and I’m happy to say it’ll be hitting PC come March 16. → Read More
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