This fella seems to be Leo Laporte mashed up with Office Space’s Milton. Here’s his YouTube channel. You’re going to want to clear your morning schedule and watch a few of these jems. God bless the Internet and all its weirdos. → Read More
PureEnergy is selling their WildCharge wireless charging solution at select T-Mobile stores and will be offering a special charging pad for the MyTouch, T-Mo’s popular Android phone. This is one of the first wireless charging solutions out there and, in addition to the Palm line, one of the first carrier-approved wireless charging solutions. Click through for the presser. → Read More
EVERYBODY PANIC! A new exploit has been found in Safari, allowing hackers to rip the entire catalog of text messages (received and sent, deleted or not) from your iPhone for their perusal and personal privacy perversions. You load the malicious website, and it goes to work, no user interaction required. In theory, this same exploit could extend to picture messages, contacts, and all sorts of other data that most people would probably rather wasn’t uploaded to some hacker’s server. → Read More
Madrid-based Tuenti, sometimes called the Facebook of Spain, has been around for four years now. It’s a very well funded company that, despite a huge growth in user numbers and a number of product releases, has been getting some bad press on their lack of monetization and for not having a clear direction – though if you follow the product releases and the company’s hiring habits, there is a roadmap.
However Tuenti has now launched what it deems to be their most strategic move yet – tapping into their social graph to introduce location-based features. The launch is a beta, still lacking some oomph perhaps, but it’s interesting to pick over what they’ve done. Especially as everyone is expecting Facebook to do the same at some point. → Read More
USB 3.0 is quickly on the road to becoming a standard issue item and Asus is helping it along in a big way. The computer manufacturer just announced that its adding the faster interface to every PC computer it makes. Yup, that includes Eee netbooks and the Eee box. → Read More
Live in New York? Live in New York? Pop over here and register for your free Wi-Fi! If you have a RoadRunner cable account, you can connect to free WiFi in “several” locations around New York including Bryant and Madison Square Parks and some parks in Queens. If you’re thinking to yourself “Hey, a few parks in Manhattan, some DMZ out in the boonies, and some spots in Port Washington (probably where the uncles of Time Warner executives live) do not make overarching WiFi access for the masses,” then you’re probably right. But when’s the last time Time Warner Cable did anything nice for you? Maybe you could be appreciative?
Thankfully you also have access to “thousands” of Optimum Wi-Fi hotspots, so it’s not THAT bad. But then Optimum’s coverage isn’t exactly in Manhattan. → Read More
Football3s.com, a real-time Fantasy Football game, has relaunched as Picklive and closed a seed investment round led by Last.FM backer Stefan Glaenzer, including Robert Dighero and other angels. Terms of the deal were undisclosed but it’s believed a six figure sum was invested in return for a minority stake.
Picklive is effectively a spin out from Mint Digital a service company working with broadcasters. The founders are Tim Morgan (CEO and ex of Mint), Noam Sohachevsky and Krzysztof Zylawy.
Billing itself as a real-time gaming startup, Picklive uses a real-time platform to allow people to play social games while watching live sport. This is what the media gurus call ‘three screen media.’ → Read More
Timetric, a startup built around the idea that statistics can be made and presented way more usefully than in the past, has closed a seed investment round. Terms were undisclosed. Participants in that round include former LastFM chairman Stefan Glänzer, Alex Zubillaga, well known Angel Sherry Coutu and Matteo Stefanel, as well as Sean Park and Udayan Goyal of Nauiokas Park.
The capital raised will be used to accelerate the rollout of their network of, rather novel, statistical services.
Timetric build services which make statistics “useful”. What does that mean? Well, timetric.com, is already an aggregator of public statistical data, and Timetric Portfolios is a simple and social tool for analysing stock portfolios. → Read More
Three Japanese universities (Waseda, Kogakuin and Showa) and robot maker Tmsuk have developed Hanako, a robotic dental patient who can behave like a human patient (to some extent). The robot, who is supposed to be female, can converse with doctors (“Please examine me!”, “That hurts!” etc.), discharge robotic saliva, sneeze, open and close her mouth, etc. → Read More
Kwaga, which offers a semantic search-based solution to help manage email, has launched a new desktop widget.
It replaces Kwaga’s existing Firefox add-on, which is being discontinued, following a 6 month Beta testing period that saw nearly 2 million emails analysed, says the company.
Dubbed Kwaga BirdsEye, the Windows/Mac OS app keeps an eye on your in-box and attempts to single out the most important emails or the ones that require more immediate attention and flag these up while you work in other applications. The idea is that it negates the need or temptation to keep checking your email in situations where you’re waiting for a meeting time confirmation or for an answer to a question you’ve asked a colleague. It makes these intelligent guesses using the company’s semantic search technology. → Read More
Just because the iPad won’t support Flash doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to watch any videos on the highly anticipated Apple device. Video platform company Ooyala, for one, this morning said it will support full video delivery to iPad when it launches on April 3rd.
The company added that its integration with iPad will help newspaper and magazine publishers create engaging experiences for their readers. → Read More
Lenovo ThinkPads have offered 3G access for a while now but soon Sprint 3G and 4G WiMAX will be available as well. All buyers will need to do is select the Sprint access during the ordering process and their fancy new notebook will arrive with a Sprint SIM card already installed. It’s then just a matter of firing up the Lenovo Access Connection tool to start the service. Of course Sprint will want a monthly service charge as well, but hopefully you can con your company into picking up the tab under the guise of “mobile productivity”.Middle mangers love that type of talk. → Read More
Voice mail is a pain, but it doesn’t have to be. Just ask the million users who’ve now registered for YouMail, a ‘digital secretary’ type service that offers visual voice mail, smart filtering, voice-to-text transcriptions and custom greetings.
YouMail, which operates only in the United States, says it has not only surpassed the 1 million registered users mark but has also handled over 300 million calls since its inception in 2007. → Read More
Remember the rash of celebrity deaths last year? Well this one just affected me more than all of those combined. The voice actor who played Dr. Wallace Breen, of Half-Life 2 fame, has passed away. Sad news is sad. → Read More
Here’s a quick look at the first US version of the HTC HD2, a really nice Windows Mobile 6.5 phone. We’ve have plenty of coverage of this phone over the past few months but now it’s available on T-Mobile for $200 with contract. It’s a really beautiful phone – and I don’t say that much – but will it take off with WinPho waiting in the wings? → Read More
If there’s one thing putting a spring in the step of publishers this summer and giving them just a little more impetus to initiate summer hours and “get away from the hustle and bustle of the city” by having their driver take them to their house on the Hamptons, it’s the iPad. Is there anything this thing can’t do? Absolutely not, because publishers are flocking to it in droves in an effort to save their falling circulation numbers.
To wit, the nut of this story is that the Wall Street Journal will cost $17.99 a month on the iPad, considerable savings over the $2 cover price. This subscription will presumably include all of the graphics and layouts that make the Journal famous as well as ads – lots of expensive, sweet ads. For example, “Unilever, Toyota Motor , Fidelity Investments” is paying Time magazine $200,000 for eight display ads in the iPages of Time magazine. That’s for eight issues, mind you, which breaks down to $25,000 an issue. $25,000 was probably the haircut budget for the ad staff at Time Inc. How can they buy a Ski-doo for their next Vail trip with that kind of money? → Read More
Toshiba is releasing one high-capacity HDD after another lately. Today, the company announced [PDF] two new hard discs, which are poised to find their way into our notebooks very soon, the MK7559GSXP (750GB/pictured) and the MK1059GSM (1TB). The 750GB model is the world’s most capacious 2.5-inch/9.5mm high HDD. Toshiba released its predecessor (holding 640GB) back in September last year. → Read More
Hello, Earth! Can you believe that this photo was taken by a man who attached a digital camera to a balloon? Madness. → Read More
Advertisers are beginning to realize that ads on the Web have their own lifecycle. People who eventually click on an ad don’t always click on it the first time they see it. Just like on TV or in print, they need to be bombarded by the same message before they take an action. The more times people see an ad on the Web, the more likely they are to eventually click on it. As annoying as this may be to most consumers, this is how advertisers view the world.
Google also sees the world through this lens, and today it fully launched what it calls ad “retargeting.” If someone visits a page on an advertiser’s own site or YouTube channel, Google can now show a related follow-up ad to just that person when they visit another site which shows Google ads. Since there are millions of sites in the Google Content Network, chances are Google will see them again. The program has been in beta since March, but it is now being rolled out to all AdWords customers. → Read More
At last fall’s TechCrunch50 event, Chyngle was voted by the crowd as best demopit startup for its branded mobile marketing apps for sports stadiums. Now Chyngle has partnered with mobiTeris to rebrand and reinvent its application as CrowdZone, a free iPhone app that acts as a mobile social network for crowds at sporting events.
CrowdZone’s app allows users to “join” a crown or start a crowd around a sports event. While the app is location-based, you can also participate from your coach and can use the app’s functionality even if you aren’t at a particular event. Within a crowd in the app, you can check-in to a game, similar to a check-in on popular mobile social network Foursquare. Once you’ve checked in, you can see other people who are using the app and where they are located in the crowd. → Read More
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