For much of the past year, the major criticism of Foursquare was that it only worked in a few select cities in the U.S. and was basically iPhone-only. In the past few months, both Foursquare itself and a growing core of third-party developers have changed that. Today brings yet another expansion in the Foursquare universe with the beta launch of a Windows Mobile app.
To be clear, this app is only meant for touch screen Windows phones, and you need to be running either Windows Mobile 6.1 or 6.5. But if you have those, you can submit your email address here to be let into the beta. Once they kick the tires in beta for a bit, the plan is to submit the app to the Windows Marketplace for Mobile, Windows Mobile Sr. Product Manager Anand Iyer writes today on his personal blog. Iyer has been working on this project on the side for a few months now, and made the app along with the help of development house Touchality. → Read More
When the Toshiba TG01 launched way back in July of last year, it seemed like an absolute beast of a handset – and you know what? It still does. Packing a 1Ghz processor into an ultra-slim handset behind a big ol’ 4.1″ touchscreen, the TG01 is still right on the cutting edge if we’re only counting the hardware specs. Leaked roadmaps made us expect the sequel, the TG02, would launch sometime at the end of last year – but that obviously hasn’t happened. Just when we thought the project might have vamoosed, handset numero dos cruises on through the FCC. → Read More
Whoa. Rockstar just announced that the two DLCs for Grand Theft Auto IV, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony, will be released for the PS3 and PC on March 30. That’s March 30 world-wide, mind you. The games will be sold separately (as downloads on PSN and Games for Windows Live) as well as in the familiar Episodes from Liberty City double pack. → Read More
Logitech’s popular MX 1100 cordless mouse costs $80 new, but you can get a “dented box” version for just $37 after using coupon code logi_mx1100_12910 on Logitech’s website. → Read More
Popular location-based social network Brightkite has simultaneously released mobile apps for some Nokia as well as Palm smartphones.
The release of the apps follows earlier launches of Android, BlackBerry and iPhone applications. → Read More
When I used to go to NYU, I assisted in teaching a web class to graduate students. There was one woman in the class who was amazed that I was able to publish her information to the Web so quickly! She thought the Internet was a black box somewhere and that I had to ask permission to put stuff onto it. Well now you can make your very own black box of Internet, courtesy of the IT Crowd. You can loan folks the Internet but remember to return it to a high tower where it can get the best reception. → Read More
At first glance, $30 may seem like a lot for a one-button old school Atari joystick with a USB connection. But this one comes with the Stella Atari 2600 and 80 games built right in and you can remove the USB controller board for use with that MAME cabinet you’ve always wanted to build. There’s even labeled solder points on the board for adding additional buttons. → Read More
What we have here is a machine that automatically turns office paper into toilet paper. It’s called White Goat (seriously) and is made by a Japanese company called Oriental [JP]. The way it works is simple: You just feed the machine with about 40 sheets of office (or whatever) paper, wait for 30 minutes and take out a perfectly made toilet paper roll.
The machine shreds the paper, which is then dissolved in water, thinned out, dried and wound into toilet rolls. Oriental says one roll costs 10 Yen ($0.11) to make, which isn’t bad. And the machine can be installed right in your office, too. Oriental also claims that regular usage of the machine can save up to 60 cedar trees annually. → Read More
Listen: cry me a river about Flash and multi-tasking. If Apple wants to keep multi-tasking for their own apps in an effort to prevent folks from making their OS run like Windows Mobile on a good day, be my guest. Push servers work great for always-connected applications. As for Flash, I think it’s all political. Anyway, rant over. Those little minxes at 9to5mac found Flash running in Safari on the iPad. If you watch the video after the jump, you notice that when they browse the NYT you can see the Dining section pop up. The Dining section is usually represented by video in a Flash box. → Read More
This is a guest post by Daniel Tenner, CTO and co-founder of Woobius, a web-based document sharing tool for architects, engineers and designers. Woobius is his second start-up. Daniel spent four years consulting at Accenture with large investment banks. One day, he decided that there were more exciting and fun things to do in the world, and went start-upping instead. He holds a Masters in Physics from Oxford University. He also blogs at danieltenner.com and on various other sites. This is his take on the iPad.
To much of the geek-sphere, the iPad is somewhat of a disappointment. It’s underwhelming – there’s nothing all that surprising in there, no “oh, and one more thing” to throw some real techno-magick spices into the pot. We saw it coming from a hundred miles away, so now that it’s finally here, there isn’t much surprise left.
I think part of the reason for this is, as usual, that the first round of people interpreting the meaning and purpose of the iPad are all geeks – developers, designers, and assorted Macheads who already own one or two macs at least, and an iphone. I believe the collective “Meh” is absolutely right from this crowd. Yes, the iPad is a nice-to-have, yes, I’ll probably be getting one, but it’s not really all that revolutionary. It doesn’t do anything that we can’t already do with our iPhones and Macs, after all.
But geeks and assorted Macheads constitute a relatively small percentage of the computer-using people around the world. The vast majority of the world is still using Windows PCs. And for them, an iPad may be exactly what they’ve been waiting for. Let me elaborate on this… → Read More
Have you heard about Blu-ray? Don’t question it, just get a player! They’re all the rage! You can get into the whole Blu-ray game for just $90 today as Amazon is selling the Sylvania NB530SLX Blu-ray Disc Player at a $42 discount. → Read More
Social bookmarking service Delicious is kicking the year off with a few enhancements to its service and interface. Delicious, which has made Michael’s favorite products list for the past three years, allows you to store, access and share your bookmarks and links from around the web.
The service has updated its bookmark display options in a more compact interface, combining all of the options to th right of the Tagbar. Tag Options has been reshuffled and moved it to the sidebar where the tags are actually listed, which makes sense. → Read More
The momentum around local online advertising is growing, especially with the expansion of the Web to mobile devices and flowering of Geo-mobile apps which need a way to make money. Today, Citysearch is throwing its hat into the local advertising ring with the launch of CityGrid, a set of APIs which makes all of Citysearch’s local listings content and advertising available to other Websites and mobile apps. The APIs include more than 15 million local business listings, 3 million user reviews, and access to 500,000 local advertisers looking to reach people near their places of business.
I sat down with Citysearch CEO Jay Herratti at IAC headquarters in Manhattan to get an overview of CityGrid (watch the video interview above). Citysearch itself is a 12-year-old site which Herratti has been updating, but it is not really growing much anymore and it is feeling considerable competitive pressure from Yelp and, even more so, from Google Local.
To counter that pressure, Citysearch already distributes its local listings content to about 100 sites and mobile apps with a collective reach of 100 million people (about a quarter of that is Citysearch.com). “I thought what if I took all the tools that we put together to build Citysearch and put it on a platter, an API and web services layer,” says Herratti. Specifically, he is referring to all the descriptions of local businesses, the reviews, photos, videos, hours of operation, offers, menus, metered phone numbers, merchant messages, and more. “What if I open that up to publishers big and small?” he asks. “I let them take it and enhance their experience, and get more pageviews.” → Read More
There’s no doubt that President Obama’s White House has been using technology more than any other previous administration. The President has a Twitter account, is using YouTube in innovative ways and has even developed an iPhone app. The White House is releasing some impressive engagement numbers from this week’s State of the Union address.
The White House had a live stream of the speech that was embeddable on blogs or websites. Nearly 1.3 million people tuned into the WhiteHouse.gov’s live video feed of the speech, which is a ten-fold increase in traffic over the most popular live-streamed event. Unfortunately, the White House doesn’t have any concrete statistics on the number of unique streams of the speech from the new iPhone App, but says that nearly a terabyte of data was served to iPhones with the application during the event. → Read More
It’s not the first Hello Kitty TV out there, but this new Toshiba TV is perhaps the one with the most discreet design. Announced [JP] today, the Hello Kitty 19A800KT is a 19-inch LCD TV that sports the cartoon cat on both the device itself and the remote controller. But that’s not all. → Read More
Social networking company Tagged.com has been awarded more than $200,000 in a default judgment against Erik Vogeler, who spammed thousands of Tagged members by sending them unsolicited messages with links to an adult dating website.
In a ruling issued earlier this week, a U.S. District Court Judge in the northern district of California found Vogeler guilty of sending messages to 6,079 Tagged users and assessed damages of $25 per violation for a total of $151,975. Court also ordered Vogeler to pay Tagged $50,000 in attorneys’ fees and to cease sending commercial emails through Tagged.com. → Read More
Apisphere, a startup that delivers location-aware technologies to mobile applications, has raised $4.6 million in funding according to an SEC filing. Apisphere creates mobile applications that use location-aware technologies to provide customized information to users.
For example, the startup created Apisphere for Outlook, a location aware plug-in for Microsoft’s Outlook that lets users to send and receive automatic messages on their mobile devices or GPS-enabled laptops based on their Outlook calendar and location. So when a meeting is scheduled in Outlook, the plug-in will provide relevant location-based information around the event including mapping, real-time traffic updates and geo-triggered voice and text messages for reminders on the go.pping, real-time traffic updates and geo-triggered voice and text messages for reminders on the go. → Read More
An SEC filing has revealed that video ringtone sharing community Vringo has filed to raise an estimated $64.3 million $13.8 million via an initial public offering of stock and warrants.
The company plans to trade on NASDAQ, with Maxim Group serving as lead underwriter. Vringo shareholders include Warburg Pincus, who invested $12 million for a 31.9% ownership stake in 2007, and undisclosed private investors.
Update: the initial $64.3 million IPO figure was inaccurate. Dow-Jones News Service has filed a correction to its story on Vringo’s filing of a Form S-1 with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The correction makes clear that the funding target for Vringo’s proposed IPO is $12.0 million, with the potential to reach $13.8 million if an over-allotment of shares is exercised. → Read More
