I’m a big VFF fan so I wanted to share this real-life VFF tryout with you but oh my sweet merciful fates the dude’s website is called My Achilles Rupture which is pretty much the most disgusting thing ever, especially when he shows the scars from his freaking rupture. A rupture! Gah! On his tendon! GAH! → Read More
[UK] A new website launches in the UK today that uses “the power of group-buying to save consumers up to 90% off the best things to do, see, eat and buy.”
Sounds familiar? Yep, it’s yet another Groupon clone.
Only this time, Groupola.com is already making claims to be the biggest group buying site in the country. That’s because it’s launching simultaneously in 8 of the largest cities across the UK, including London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff and Edinburgh.
This makes it immediately standout from rivals such as Berlin-based MyCityDeal and Groupon itself, both of which have a UK reach currently limited to London. → Read More
Sometimes I despair of Europe, even though I’m proud of what can be achieved here. But really, guys, can we get it together?
At the same time the European Union is investigating a pretty flimsy anti-trust complaint against Google, it’s conspiciously ignoring a case in Italy where three Google executives have been found guilty on a ridiculous charge. Here is the bizarre story.
An Italian court yesterday convicted two current and one former Google exec in a trial over a video showing a teenager being bullied. The Google Italy employees were accused of breaking Italian law by allowing the video of bullying of a teenager with autism to be posted on YouTube Google Video in late 2006.
Despite the fact that Google removed the video within hours of being notified of its existence, Judge Oscar Magi (pictured) absolved the three of defamation but convicted them of privacy violations. The three executives have received a suspended six-month sentence, while a fourth defendant was acquitted. Google is appealing the sentences on their behalf.
Google has responded in a justifiably vociferous blog post calling this a “serious threat to the web in Italy”. Frankly they are right. → Read More
I don’t know how to begin this, so I’ll get right to it: A Japanese company called K’s Japan is offering an “electric guitar” [JP] that’s just made to get destroyed. And, after you smashed the thing to bits, you can recycle it. So what we have here is a “destroyable price and recyclable system” (K’s Japan’s official tag line), which is ideal for guitarists who want to look cool without sacrificing their real instrument. → Read More
I think I speak for everyone when I say, “IT’S ABOUT TIME!” I mean, where were you the first time you wished for a machine that could predict someone’s age range just by emitting a mosquito buzzing sound that only people in certain age ranges could hear, thus alerting you to that person’s true age? I was so young I can barely remember when I first wished this would become a reality. Now that it’s here, I can hardly believe it! All these emotions! It’s like falling in love, getting your heart broken, and going to a funeral of a coworker you never actually met but exchanged e-mails with a few times, all in a split second! → Read More
If you’re reading this, chances are pretty good that you’re not on a 4G connection. Why? Because outside of a handful of cities, 4G connections just don’t exist yet. Take Sprint’s WiMax network, for example: as of right this second, it’s still only available in about 27 cities [coverage map], primarily in Texas and the East Coast. That’s about to get a little bit better, with Sprint announcing today that they’ll be rolling out to 8 more cities by the end of this year. → Read More
My buddy Rich tweeted a terse message yesterday afternoon: “Happy Birthday Apache Web Server, started 15 years ago today!” I had meant to write up the story then, but forgot it about it. Consider this my “Happy belated birthday” card. → Read More
Out here in the fields
I fight for space meals
I get my back into my monkey
I don’t need to fight
To prove I’m right
I don’t need a carabiner. → Read More
After eight years of operating in quasi-stealth, Bloom Energy came out with a bang today at an event in Silicon Valley attended by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Colin Powell, Larry Page, John Doerr, and executives from eBay, Walmart, Coca-Cola, and FedEx. All of the big-name companies, including Google, are beta customers of Bloom’s distributed energy fuel cell technology (which was the subject of a 60 Minutes profile on Sunday and various other stories since then).
Doerr, the Kleiner Perkins VC who backed both Bloom and Google, said today: “This Is Like The Google IPO.” Except without the IPO part. Doerr was referring to the fact that, like Google, Bloom has kept its business close to its vest until it actually could show some progress in terms of customers and products. Five Bloom energy boxes about the size of a parking space each now provide 15 percent of the power at eBay’s campus. Walmart is testing the boxes in two locations where it is carrying 60 to 80 percent of the energy load of an entire store. Google co-founder Larry Page calls the technology a “very big deal” and looks forward to the day that it can expand the number of Bloom boxes Google uses to the point where it can power one of its data centers. → Read More
It’s probably tricky to time these things to perfection, since Apple pulls the strings.
The UK Spotify competitor, We7, has had its iPhone app approved and is now available to download from the iTunes App Store. The problem is that the associated premium music subscription service, needed to run the app, doesn’t seemed to have launched yet.
Or at least that’s how it looks.
Judging by the site’s subscription page and reviews published in the App Store, whilst you can download the app, since you can’t yet subscribe to the mobile version of We7′s music subscription service, it’s currently useless. → Read More
When it was announced that retailer Walmart would buy streaming movie startup Vudu a couple days ago, a number of sites wondered what it would mean for Vudu’s adult content. Here’s what it means: bye bye.
An email is currently being sent out by Vudu letting its After Dark (the adult portion of its service run with adult publication AVN) partners that the section will be discontinued in the “coming days.” Find the full email at the bottom of this post. → Read More
“Look, honey! There’s a cyborg up on the telephone pole outside. Should we invite it in for some motor oil and finger sandwiches or do you think it’d try to kill us? Whup. Wait. It’s a repair man. Cyborgs don’t have butt cracks. That’s how you can tell. False alarm. Should we invite him in for some coffee and finger sandwiches or do you think he’d try to kill us?” → Read More
Dagnabbit! Our secret blogging weapon has been revealed to the public. Now, you too, can run a successful gadget blog from the comfort of your own chair! → Read More
1234. 1111. 0000. When it comes to 4-digit unlock codes, most people fall back on the same patterns/ideas that everyone else uses. “Boy! I sure hope the big bad hacker folks don’t think to punch in my Birthday!” Alpha-numeric passwords (that is, passwords with both letters and numbers) are inherently more secure. More possibilities means more security, right? Alas, the iPhone only supports 4-digit codes — out of the box, at least. A few clever gents have figured out an incredibly simple modification that gives you access to the full keyboard for your lockdown duties, no jailbreak required. → Read More
Wow. This young lady is amazingly excited about Wonder Boy and Adventure Island, two crazy games for the Sega Master System and the NES. While I don’t think I’ve ever played Adventure Island or Wonder Boy, I did enjoy Wonder Boys and suspect that Lucky Wander Boy was based on the SMS version. So there’s that. → Read More
Investment giant Fidelity is getting into the mobile game with a new iPhone app. Fidelity’s free app allows you to monitor your portfolio, trades, research investments, and follow daily market news on the go.
With the app, you can track your portfolio and monitor positions, balances, and intraday valuations of accounts. The app also lets you trade stocks, mutual funds, ETFs and options from within the app and lets you check the status of your orders. → Read More
Interesting. For $80, Hammacher Schlemmer will sell you something that you plug into your car’s cigarette lighter to improve your gas mileage “by up to 18%.” → Read More
Another fire erupted amongst developers and consumers when Apple decided to pull the plug on apps that contained content of questionable nature. This isn’t the first time Apple has done this, but with the pulling of Wobble iBoobs from the app store came a surge of app killings and everyone said they’d had enough. → Read More
Our best buddy, Scott, he of ScottEVest, just started its massive 40%-off sale. They have plenty of great stuff including the Quantum and Evolution jackets and my favorite, the cotton hoodie. → Read More
We’ve been getting a number of tips about the Google App Engine API being down hard, causing a good number of third-party services who depend on it to fail or be downright inaccessible. A quick check on API-status, which tracks that sort of thing, confirmed the service disruption.
The outage was also confirmed by the App Engine team in a Google Groups discussion, making it clear this wasn’t a scheduled event. → Read More
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