Earlier today, two men were spotted having coffee in Palo Alto, CA. Except these weren’t just any two men. They were the CEOs of perhaps the two most important and powerful companies in Silicon Valley right now, Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Big deal, you might think. After all, Schmidt used to be on Apple’s board. But ever since he stepped down (and actually before he did), the growing animosity between the two formerly close companies has been apparent.
So what does their coffee date mean? Well, obviously, only Jobs and Schmidt know for sure. Gizmodo, which scored the pictures, also has accounts that they were discussing technology. It’s a better sign than if they were screaming at one another, I suppose. But, as with anything Apple, you should never discount the possibility that this entire thing was staged so that someone would see them and snap a picture that would produce a thousand blog posts. → Read More
So yeah, we’re living in the age of 3D. I just made a quick run inside the main PAX East/A> (henceforth know as PAX), and Nvidia has 3D games all over the place. There’s no escaping it~! → Read More
Big Data is great for geeks, but most normal people don’t get a kick out of looking at huge tables of data (Excel junkies excluded). Factual, which is an open database wiki, just added some tools to help visualize the data entered on the site.
Every table now has a “visualizations” tab which lets anyone who publishes a set of data an easy way to turn that data into graphs, maps, and images. For instance, here is a map view of a restaurant database. Here is one for hiking trails which shows a difficulty dial, the length of the route, today’s weather, and which seasons the trail is open. Each visualization can be embedded as code onto a Website and is directly editable. For every entry there is an “edit this” button which lets anyone correct mistakes or add more information. → Read More
Have they not paid their bill maybe? Update: Yeah, billing glitch. → Read More
Greetings, fellow gamers. I’m in Boston for PAX East. It’s all the fun of the Penny Arcade Expo, but done east coast hip-hop style. It’s just me and I have no idea what I’m doing, but expect a steady stream of video game goodness in the next two days. Any requests—specific game you want to see or whatever? Pick a fight with a certain publisher? Let me know! → Read More
Quick note as the headline pretty much says everything you need to know, but Major Nelson announced that Xbox 360 is getting USB mass storage support April 6th just like we thought. You can bring your own flash drive to the party but the service will only support up to 16GB and the 360 will format your drive the first time. Official drives will come from SanDisk sometime down the road, too. Anyway, April 6th, kids. → Read More
Yandex is one of few national non-English language search engines that have managed to outrun the likes of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo in their countries, in this case Russia.
Yandex was first to market in Russia – it made its debut in 1997 – and has since established itself as the undisputed leader in search with an estimated domestic market share of 58% according to LiveInternet.ru. At number two we find Google, which trails far behind at 23% despite a recent search partnership with Mail.ru, the third horse in this race.
But rather than building a browser of its own, Yandex has apparently opted to develop a custom iteration of Google’s Chrome browser based on the Chromium open source project. → Read More
Apple’s stock is up over $3 today, pushing it past the $230-a-share mark. Microsoft’s is down $0.25, pushing it below the $30-a-share mark. While this discrepancy is huge on the surface, it doesn’t mean all that much because there are many, many more outstanding shares of Microsoft stock out there on the market (ten times more, in fact). That’s why Microsoft’s market cap is higher than Apple’s, despite the individual stock price difference. But that market cap gap is closing. Quickly.
Apple looks poised to get within $50 billion of Microsoft market cap any day now. Currently, Apple’s market cap is $208.76 billion, while Microsoft’s is $261.01 billion. And while $50 billion may seem like a huge chasm, consider that since December 31, 2009, just a few months ago, Apple has added about $20 billion to its market cap, while Microsoft has lost about $10 billion. Again, the gap is closing, quickly. → Read More
The disc required to get Netflix up and running on the Wii should hit subscribers mailboxes sometime today. Here’s a quick look at the Wii-ish interface and controls. Nifty, eh? Too bad there’s no HD content on the Wii version. [via Download Squad] → Read More
Facebook introduced some changes to its privacy policy today in advance of new features which will be rolling out soon, perhaps during its f8 developer conference next month. Some of the changes foreshadow new features dealing with location, taking advantage of the expanded “Everyone” settings, syncing contacts on your mobile phone with your Facebook contacts, and sharing your personal data with select Facebook Connect partners.
The most significant change seems like it could allow third-party sites to automatically sign you into Facebook Connect just based on your browser cookies. Another change sets up new location features. Facebook previously added some location language to its privacy policy back in October, but it’s now tweaked it again. It looks like not only will it be possible to associate a specific location with status updates, photo uploads, and other posts, but Facebook will also make it possible to add a geo-component Facebook pages, such as one for a store or a restaurant. So a link to a fan page for a store could also carry with it where it is located. → Read More
In anticipation of a slew of new features that will be launching at f8, today Facebook announced that it was once again making changes to its privacy policy (you can see our post outlining these changes here). One of the biggest changes that Facebook is making involves applications and third-party websites. We’ve been hearing whispers from multiple sources about these changes, and the announcement all but confirms what Facebook is planning to do. In short, it sounds like Facebook is going to be automatically opting users into a reduced form of Facebook Connect on certain third party sites — a bold change that may well unnerve users, at least at first. Here’s how Facebook is describing the change in its blog post:
In the proposed privacy policy, we’ve also explained the possibility of working with some partner websites that we pre-approve to offer a more personalized experience at the moment you visit the site. In such instances, we would only introduce this feature with a small, select group of partners and we would also offer new controls.
Man oh man! Remember the LG Rumor Touch? The touchscreen feature phone Sprint announced all the way back at CES in early January? If you’d had asked me yesterday when this thing was going to launch, my response would have been a blank stare followed by “Holy crap, that hasn’t launched yet?” Sure enough, it hasn’t – but it’s just about to. Sprint’s cutting it pretty close, but it looks like they’ll just baaaarely make it within the first quarter launch window they promised at the beginning. → Read More
Yesterday, we wrote about the great lengths many cities and towns were taking to catch the attention of Google, in the hope that the search giant would choose their community for its experimental fiber network. The broadband network would be completely free for the chosen city (only the consumers using the services will be charged) and the 1Gb/sec fiber would be roughly 100 times faster than what most Americans get today for Internet speeds. Google’s plan is to reach anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000 people with this experiment. City mayor did everything under the sun to try to appeal to Google, including jumping into freezing lakes and shark tanks and even renaming a city “Google.” The deadline to apply to be one of Google’s guinea pigs ends today and according to a blog post, Google has received more than 600 applications from communities and towns across the U.S.
That’s an impressive number and the application process still isn’t over with four more hours to go until the deadline. Google asked that interested municipalities fill out a Request for Information (RFI) to help determine the best community for the experiment. Google estimated that each form/request from cities would take around 4 hours to complete. Individuals and citizens can also submit letters of support for cities; Google says that over 190,000 letters have been submitted over the past month. → Read More
We could be looking at the end of RadioShack, boys and girls. The company is said to be exploring a strategic partnership, or outright sale, possibly to Best Buy. I don’t see why Best Buy would be interested: what does RadioShack sell that’s either A) not already available or B) entirely too niche for its Wal-Mart approach to selling consumer electronics? → Read More
Bags have been packed, poker chips have been cashed, and planes have been boarded – and with that, the mobile-focused CTIA 2010 convention in Las Vegas has come to a close. Each time an event like this blows through town, tech heads do their best to distract themselves from their hangovers by writing monstrous posts on which platform or technology “won” the show. When it comes to CTIA 2010, the winner is clear cut and undisputed: Android. They could have called this year’s show “Android Week” and no one would have questioned it. → Read More
Your first question is probably what the hell is a “Gobel” and will it rival Foursquare? Not quite. It’s Panasonic’s subsidiary in Indonesia and it was also a top trending topic on Twitter this morning, along with RCTI and Putra Nababan. All three are Indonesian (RCTI is an Indonesian television station and Putra Nababan is a popular TV host on RCTI) and all are connected to the apparently very popular 13th annual Panasonic Gobel Awards (celebrates TV and broadcasting achievements)— essentially Indonesia’s version of the Emmys. The number of tweets on “Panasonic Gobel” exceeded 4,500, according to Google. So why do we care?
Well if you’re a venture capitalist, an entrepreneur or a corporation you should care a lot. Because it illustrates the incredible power of the Indonesian internet consumer, or rather their consumer in general. Indonesia is undergoing a period of growth (it grew 4.5% last year during the global financial crisis) but has largely flown under the radar— despite housing more than 230 million people and being the fourth most populated country in the world. Of course, Indonesia is still struggling with high unemployment and poverty but like China and India it has a growing middle class that is spending more time on the internet, especially on social media sites like Twitter. To put this power in perspective: For a few hours this morning, Panasonic’s name was on the homepage of every Twitter user that logged on. → Read More
After news of the HD and XL iPad versions of some of our favorite games are on their way – Flight Control being one of my personal obsessions – we thought it would be fun to ponder what other boardgames would make for a fun iPad experience. Here’s our list. What would you guys like to see? → Read More
Oh, look! The first screenshots of Sonic The Hedgehog 4! I do believe Sonic now hold the record for longest wait between the third and fourth game in a series, beating Street Fighter IV. That’s my gut feeling, but that has proven wildly inaccurate in the past. → Read More
Video streaming apps on the iPhone in the U.S. have always had to contend with the limitations of AT&T’s data network. For a long time, video streaming apps were not allowed in the App Store. And when they did finally get approved, at first they could only stream videos via WiFi.
As AT&T slowly beefs up its data network, iPhone apps can now deliver streams over 3G. But network availability is still an issue, so much so that Apple is now requiring that video watching apps support multiple streaming bitrates before it will approve an app. At least that was the case for Justin.tv’s iPhone video app, which hit the App Store earlier this week. During the approval process, Justin.tv was asked to incorporate both high-quality (200 kbps) and low-quality (64 kbps) streams. The video switches to a low-quality when the 3G network is overloaded or only the slower EDGE network is available (which renders any video painful to watch no matter what the bitrate). → Read More
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