The title says it all, ladies and gentlemen. Walmart plans to buy VUDU. The deal is expected to close in a few weeks. Full press release inside. → Read More
ViewSonic’s 13.3-inch ViewBook Pro (VNB131) promises up to 8-hour battery life with the standard 6-cell battery but you can also swap out the built-in optical drive with an included 3-cell battery slice for an extra four hours of juice. That’s a nice touch for anyone who’s on the go a lot but still needs to be able to work with disc-based media from time to time. → Read More
Now that Twitter did away with its monolithic Suggested User List, everyone can fight for followers on a more equal footing. Tweetmeme wants to help you gain followers with a new Follow Button you can place on your blog or Website. It looks very much like Tweetmeme’s ReTweet button, which is on 100,000 sites and registering 7 billion monthly impressions across the web, except it says “Follow” instead of “Retweet.” When you click on the Follow button, a window pops open that lets you sign into Twitter and follow the account tied to the button (usually the person or publication of the site the button is on). → Read More
It’s beginning to look like Expensive Speed Day here at CrunchGear, what with the USB 3.0 products and now this solid state drive from SanDisk. The G3 SSD is a solid-state drive available in 60GB and 120GB capacities for around $230 and $400, respectively. → Read More
In an age when standard USB 2.0 cables can be purchased for next to nothing, the $40 price tag on Belkin’s 4-foot USB 3.0 cable ought to be enough to keep most of us out of the early adopter demographic for a while. → Read More
Last year, Apple’s iPhone nearly doubled its worldwide market share of smartphone sales to 14.4 percent, up 6.2 points from the year before, according to the latest market share figures put out by Gartner. The iPhone still trails behind Nokia’s Symbian-powered smartphones (No. 1), which saw their share decline 5.5 points to 46.9 percent, and RIM Blackberries (No. 2), which gained 3.3 points to end the year with a 19.9 percent share.
Remember, these are worldwide estimates. In the U.S., both Blackberry and Apple are much larger than Symbian. And when it comes to mobile Web traffic, Apple and Android dominate with 81 percent share. According to Gartner, Android phone sales jumped 3.4 points (to 3.9 percent), but Android is still smaller than WIndows Mobile or Linux. Those mobile OSes, however, saw their market share drop 3.1 and 2.9 percent, respectively. Palm’s WebOS barely made a mark with 0.7 percent share. → Read More
Last year, Apple’s iPhone nearly doubled its worldwide market share of smartphone sales to 14.4 percent, up 6.2 points from the year before, according to the latest market share figures put out by Gartner. The iPhone still trails behind Nokia’s Symbian-powered smartphones (No. 1), which saw their share decline 5.5 points to 46.9 percent, and RIM Blackberries (No. 2), which gained 3.3 points to end the year with a 19.9 percent share.
Remember, these are worldwide estimates. In the U.S., both Blackberry and Apple are much larger than Symbian. And when it comes to mobile Web traffic, Apple and Android dominate with 81 percent share. According to Gartner, Android phone sales jumped 3.4 points (to 3.9 percent), but Android is still smaller than WIndows Mobile or Linux. Those mobile OSes, however, saw their market share drop 3.1 and 2.9 percent, respectively. Palm’s WebOS barely made a mark with 0.7 percent share. → Read More
Mobile streaming video startup Qik has landed a significant distribution deal in the UK.
Vodafone UK customers will now be able to record and share videos from their mobile phone via Qik by texting ‘Qik’ to 97886 (free) to receive a link to the relevant app for their handset (standard data charges apply). Vodafone is the number two mobile network in the UK, behind O2 and ahead of Orange.
Once loaded, videos generated on Qik can be posted to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter and users will be able to send video messages privately via SMS and email, or upload videos to blogging platforms like Wordpress, Tumblr and Blogger.
It remains to be seen how many customers will actually take up Qik however. However, live streaming video from a mobile has yet to take off here and it may well a deal like this to kick off mainstream take-up. → Read More
What is it with publishers fascination with second-hand sales? Yes, for every used video game you buy on eBay, the publisher sees zero dollars and zero cents, but are they operating at such razor-thin margins that teens auctioning off their old PSP games is worth their attention? You don’t see Ford or GM or Toyota or Honda or anything complaining about used cars sales, do you? (Actually, do you? I know next to nothing about cars.) Electronic Arts’ “Project Ten Dollar” was concocted to battle against the scourge of second-hand video game sales, forcing gamers to pay upward of $10 for DLC that usually comes for free alongside the purchase of a new video game. Turns out, not only does it hurt consumers and retailers, but it hurts publishers in the long run! → Read More
As the presence of television content on the web increases, the entertainment industry needs applications to measure the content’s performance. Wiredset’s Trendrr, a comprehensive digital data tracking platform, is launching a new realtime dashboard catered to TV networks.
The new tracking platform, which is available to any Trendrr Pro users, allows film studios, networks and record labels to track and aggregate data surrounding their properties and gain instant insights on location, gender, volume, sentiment, and influence as the conversation takes place. The application gathers data from over 50 of the web’s social destinations, including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Last.fm, Amazon, Craigslist, and eBay, and delivers users a realtime view of data within a dashboard. → Read More
What was unthinkable 10 to 20 years ago, has been reality for quite some time now: Not Japanese but Korean electronics companies are dominating the TV hardware market. American market research firm DisplaySearch says regarding shipment value, Samsung has maintained its position as the leader in the global flat-panel TV market last year. And another Korean company is becoming stronger, too. → Read More
Leena Rao picked a great title when she wrote a post about fledgling Inbox2 late last year, writing that the startup essentially aims to rule all incoming communication streams, as the Web service turns your email and micro blogging updates from friends and contacts into a single, ever-synched activity stream.
Now, the Holland-based company is launching a nifty, free software program (Windows only for now) that does exactly the same in the form of a native desktop client. → Read More
Another international airport has adopted those full-body scanners that have proven to be so controversial. Paris’ Charles de Gaulle has installed the machine on a three-month trial basis. → Read More
Online music service Grooveshark is today announcing the launch of a native app for devices running Palm webOS, or in other words the Palm Pre and Pixi phones.
With the app, Grooveshark users gain access to its vast on-demand song catalog – the number of tracks in there runs in the millions – but also to the personal playlists and favorites they and other users have cultivated on the kick-ass music service.
The app should be available ‘very soon’, according to the startup, although VIP users (who pay $3/month) can get early access. → Read More
Visage Mobile, an enterprise mobility management company, has raised $4.5 million in Series B funding from Qualcomm Ventures with Worldview Technology Partners, ATA Ventures, Vesbridge Partners, and Emergence Capital Partners participating in the round. This funding brings the company’s total funding up to nearly $100 million.
Visage Mobile’s SaaS application basically lets businesses have control and visibility over all of the wireless devices and spend within their companies. The service will organize how many wireless devices are being used in your company, which employee is using a device, your company’s monthly wireless spend and how your wireless spending breaks down. Additionally, Visage Mobile helps businesses set policies to govern employee usage of smartphone and mobile broadband. → Read More
TeachStreet, Yelp-like service for real world classes (cooking, dog obedience, music lessons, ballroom dance, foreign language, golf, yoga, etc.), is getting into the standardized test prep space. Today, the startup is rolling out a partner promotion with Kaplan Test Prep, and a number of MBA/GMAT/GRE content providers.
TeachStreet, which serves seven metropolitan areas in the U.S. including New York City, Silicon Valley/San Francisco and Seattle, allows instructors to upload information about classes. Users can look for available classes, and read and write reviews on the course and the instructor. Currently, the site includes a selection of more than 150,000 classes and teachers, across more than 700 subjects and categories. → Read More
Tech giant Juniper Networks this morning introduced the $50 million Junos Innovation Fund, a new corporate venture capital initiative that will invest primarily in VC-backed technology companies in early or growth stage.
The fund builds up on Juniper’s efforts to establish an ecosystem of technologies, software and applications built on its cross-network software platform Junos, the company said. → Read More
Recently a war has broken out in Europe about who will power online video for media owners. The two main players tussling it out are both from the US: Ooyala and Brightcove.
Last month Ooyala, a provider of video platform applications and services, and the UK’s Telegraph Media Group signed an agreement for Ooyala to run online video on the publisher’s websites and co-develop new technologies.
Today Ooyala is partnering with Middle East based social media platform developer H2O New Media, giving it distribution rights to Ooyala’s video platform, Backlot. It wil be used to stream video content from the growing Middle East television and media sector.
But (also today) Brightcove, which already has some big partners in Europe, is fighting back with a swathe of deals in Spain. → Read More
In theory there would be a huge advantage to having a bookstore that was not locked to one device. Historically the music industry was caught on the hop when Apple launched the iPod. Because it could play MP3s the iPod was the perfect companion to the Napsters/Kazaas of this world. That was a business for Apple, but not for the music industry, which later found itself locked into the the Apple store. Eventually online stores started offering DRM-free MP3s for sale, but as we know, the slow-to-react music industry has not recovered since.
The same is true of books. Why lock down books to one device? But of course Amazon is trying to do exactly this with the Kindle. So it makes sense then to disrupt them faster, with a service which syncs across platforms and devices. Step forward Kobo Books.
Kobo is a cloud-based book store, previously only available in the US but today launching in the UK in a first push into Europe. → Read More
Evernote, a great Web service that enables people to capture and store information, memories, and content in various environments, this morning announced the availability of an Evernote SmartSolution app for three of Lexmark’s inkjet printers: Interact, Prestige and Platinum.
The Evernote SmartSolution application basically allows users to send hardcopy scans from these Lexmark devices straight into their Evernote Web account with the touch of a single button, computer not required. → Read More
