How many Shanzai does it take to clone the new iPhone? Apparently one and he doesn’t need very long to do it, either. Hot on the heels of the iPhone leak Chinese cloners are already producing iPhone-alikes that look just like the iPhone HD/4G/XXX/]I[. Shenzhai makers in Shenzhen that have the most acute business sense took advantage of these informations and work out a clone of this fresh iPhone, and that’s what in front of you.Except the copied design, nothing is special. You can expect things like dual sim, Java, FM radio from it as you do from other ordinary MTK chipset phones. No words about the price, but it’s not surprising if you see one in a electronic mall with a price tag around 500 Yuan. UPDATE – GizChina has a video. → Read More
Japan loves robots, we know that much. Last year, the Japanese government announced it plans to to send a robot to the moon by 2020 (that was to be joined by a human astronaut 10 years later). Today, the Osaka-based “Space Oriented Higashiosaka Leading Association” (SOHLA) announced [JP, PDF] a quite similar undertaking: putting a robot on the moon by 2015. → Read More
Last fall Reddit, a very popular link sharing community, launched a new self-serve ad platform that allowed any of its users to spend a little dough to get their links prominently displayed on the site. The logic? People were always trying to game the system anyway, so Reddit figured it might as well get them to pay for it. Today, Reddit is rolling out an upgraded version of the ad platform.
The biggest addition to the ad platform, and the one that most people have been asking for, is targeting — you’ll now be able to specify which sections of Reddit you’d like your ad to appear on (there are many options, including everything from ‘funny’ to ‘cooking’). When you target a link at, say, the Science Reddit, it will appear both on that section and on the Reddit homepage for logged-in users who have subscribed to the Science section. Reddit is also using some logic to help advertisers targeting more niche Reddits get their money’s worth — if you target the ‘Knitting’ Reddit (which isn’t particularly popular), then Reddit will make sure that the small number of users who are subscribed to Knitting will see that ad on the Reddit homepage. → Read More
Why haven’t we applied the “gate” suffix to this Infinity Ward-Activision story yet? “Infinity Gate” has a certain ring to it, sorta sounds the name of a private military company. Anyway, how would you feel if you worked for a company and you made a product. It was a successfully product, like, you made the company $1 billion in just a few months. As per your contract, you’re due a certain amount of money (royalties) for your troubles. The thing is, the company says, “Hey, you know that money we owe you? We won’t give it to you until you finish another product. If you leave us you forfeit all claims to that money we owe you.” Not cool, no, but that’s what the Infinity Ward Employee Group now claims. → Read More
This is just sweet. There’s no other word for it. Ignore the comical knees and slightly more bulky build, that’s the TF2 Spy. He has everything from the smirky grin to his cigerate to his various masks. It’s classic. → Read More
Google wants us to move all of our data to the cloud. And yet, they keep having issues where a service that many people rely heavily on goes down. The latest is Google Calendar, which has been down for many people for well over an hour now.
The App Status Dashboard, and Google Calendar’s Twitter account confirm the disruption, but won’t say what caused it. We have an email into Google as well and will update when we hear back. → Read More
Waiting for the World of Warcraft movie? Prepare to keep waiting. A recent interview revealed that the movie is still in the super early stages of pre-production. They’re still going over the story at meetings, still trying to figure out how to adapt the entire Warcraft universe to the big screen. Movies take a long time to create. → Read More
AOL had a rough quarter. Total revenues dropped 23 percent, and even the advertising part (you know, AOL’s future) was down 19 percent to $354 million. In the same quarter, Yahoo saw display advertising revenues rise 20 percent, Google’s ad revenues were up 21.5 percent, and even Microsoft saw a 12 percent uptrick in online revenues. “We are hustling as fast as we can,” offered AOL CEO Tim Armstrong on the earnings conference call today. But Armstrong, who is an avid marathon runner, knows he needs to hustle faster. “We are not happy with overall lagging the ad market,” he acknowledges, and promises to “put our foot on the gas pedal.”
One big cause of the flagging ad sales is that AOL’s sales force is still going through a wrenching transition where 80 percent have been assigned new accounts and are now organized differently. So that is still working through the system. But if you look at the breakdown of ad revenues there are other things to worry about as well. → Read More
Last week I walked through the set of American Idiot, a new broadway musical featuring the songs of the skiffle band, Green Day. I’m not big on musical theatre – I was never given even a chorus part in high school and ended up doing crew, which was much more fun, so maybe it’s sour grapes – but this musical has 44 different video screens on stage, each doing something different, making it one of the most technically impressive productions on Broadway. I was there to find out how they did it. The forty-four screens, as you see above, are all Sony Bravia TVs of various sizes. The goal during production was to “sequence” the screens to match the onscreen action. Interestingly, because of union labor guidelines, the TV controls had to be connected to the lightboard using a theatrical networking protocol called DMX512 so the trained lightboard operator – whose training usually stops a the ability to push a slider up and down – would be able to press one button to get all of the TVs to work correctly. Why? If they had to hire a special “TV operator,” the unions would force every production in the future to hire a “TV operator” and given tight budgets, they have to kluge like crazy. It’s the equivalent of controlling a massive network of computers from a green-screen terminal with only a serial port simply because the boss likes his Wang desktop. There’s no business like show business! → Read More
Fwix, a news site that offers a stream of hyperlocal, realtime news by location, is tapping into Facebook’s recently launched Open Graph API to socialize content on its platform. As we wrote in our initial coverage of Facebook’s announcement of the API, it aims to add a layer of social connections and instant personalization based on people’s interests and “likes” on every single page on the Web.
Users on Fwix can now like any piece of content on the platform. And readers can customize news feeds for any level – by place, topic or Facebook friend – and then connect with others interested in the same topics. Other readers’ interests and comments that are similar to yours will also show up in your own news feed, as well as social interactions around news, suggested topics and more, aiming to create an ecosystem of real-time local and hyperlocal news. → Read More
Only Art Lebedev could come up with something so clever, but yet simple, as a temperature-sensitive battery mug. You know, because it shows the ‘power level’ of your hot drink. Get it? $28. [Art Lebedev Store via UberGizmo] → Read More
Semi-transparent smartphone screens floating in front of the user Minority Report style are all the rage right now. Palm started it back in May with their first “Life moves fast. Dont Miss A Thing.” commercial. Microsoft had the unfortunate timing of launching a strikingly similar ad just 3 days later — and then RIM showed up with their crazy impromptu dance club remix of the idea just yesterday.
Oh well. Copy-cats aside, Palm’s carrying on with the idea. Showing off their new found abilities to make ads that don’t creep us out or otherwise turn us away, they’ve just released two more TV spots. (Heads up: Instead of cute lady people, these ones feature hipster dudes, one of whom seems to be trying to dress like Neo.)
Check’em out after the jump. → Read More
That’s funny. When I last wrote about Iron Man 2, I had guessed that Scarlett Johansson would be the only reason to see the movie, and it looks like I was right! The first review of the movie has been published, and it includes this: “Meanwhile, [Johansson] struts through the film in various stages of dress and undress, which might be the best thing about Iron Man 2 for its younger male fans.” Other than that? The movie is hot garbage. Go figure. → Read More
On the heels of the report that Apple purchased chip maker Intrinsity, Apple appears to have made another purchase: Siri, a personal assistant for the iPhone. According to a pre-merger notification released by the Federal Trade Commission, and first noticed by Robert Scoble, the transaction will not be held up by any antitrust reviews. The deal was likely small from Apple’s perspective. Siri is a small startup that has raised $24 million in funding. Update: Siri board member Gary Morgenthaler confirmed the transaction.
Siri brings a conversational interface to the iPhone which allows you to ask it to perform tasks for you such as find a French restaurant nearby and book a table, look up movie listings, order a taxi, or look up the phone number and address of a local business.You can read our full review of the app here. → Read More
Could this day get any better? The annual Apple Worldwide Developers Conference is happening on June 7. I suspect the iPhone HD or whatever it will be called will be there and it will be protected by robots and ninjas. → Read More
Lexar Media, a provider of memory products for digital media, recently announced the release of their Lexar Professional 600x and 300x 32GB CompactFlash cards as well as the Lexar Professional ExpressCard CompactFlash Reader. The products offer improved performance with a guaranteed minimum write speed of 90MB/s and 45MB/s for the 600x and 300x cards, respectively, when paired with an UDMA 6-enable device. The ExpressCard Reader is a portable CF card reader that fits into a PC or Mac ExpressCard slot and supports read/write speeds of up to 133MB/s. → Read More
So you bought your child an iPhone and you gave him or her an iTunes account and password and told them that they can simply download as many apps as they want, 24 hours a day, even if they cost money. But what’s this? Junior or Julia has started downloading saucy sex sensors and card games containing images of ladies in various states of undress? How did this happen? It’s Apple’s fault. The Parents Television Council (also known as Parents Against Adults) believe that Apple isn’t doing enough to prevent underage children from downloading apps even though each app download requires a password to be tapped in and parental controls can prevent certain apps from appearing on the phone. After all, it’s Apple’s responsibility to ensure that kids don’t see boobs, not yours. → Read More
Listen, I know it’s easy to make fun of Boy Scouts. I’ve heard my share of “Go build a birdhouse” jabs being an Eagle Scout myself, but let’s get this straight. The just-announced video game belt loop isn’t for Boy Scouts, it’s for elementary-aged Cub Scouts. So let’s take it down a notch or two, Internet. → Read More
Plastic Jungle, a marketplace for gift cards, is hoping to shakeup the gift card market by allowing gift card owners to use certificates for a given store at another online retail establishment. Plastic Jungle lets you buy, sell and exchange gift cards online. Instead of receiving cash for your gift card, Plastic Jungle also lets you trade the value in for an Amazon gift card or give your money to charity. Users can receive cash for unwanted gift cards for up to 92% of the unused balance and buy gift cards at up to a 30% discount.
Plastic Jungle, which just raised another $7.4 million in funding, will partner with online retailers to power a payment portal in the checkout process that will allow shoppers to use a credit from a different store to make an online payment. You enter the gift card like you would a credit card based on the unique serial number and pin code that every major gift card has. Similar to its exchange on the site, Plastic Jungle will offer you up to 92% of the unused balance on the card. So if you want to use a $100 Target.com gift card at Gap.com, you’d receive $92 from Plastic Jungle to put towards your Gap.com balance. → Read More
That right there? Yeah, it’s the world’s largest curved plasma screen. Betcha you didn’t even know that plasma screens could be anything but flat. I didn’t. This fine screen measures 200-inches and was unveiled yesterday in Japan’s Kansai International Airport Departure Area to clearly remind travelers that no matter where they go, no place does technology like Japan. That’s mean. Click through to embiggen the pic. → Read More
