You’re an outdoorsy type, aren’t you? You only read mobile-phone blogs on your down-time between hiking and BASE jumping. I can tell.
Being that you are that wonderful blend of outdoorsman (or outdoorswoman) and phone aficionado, I bet you’re often peeved about the whole lack of power outlets in the wild (I know I am). Well, well, looky here, someone out there has heard your cries.
Sagem are soon to release their solar-powered, puma-branded feature-phone to the masses. How do we know that? Well, it’s just gone and had it’s first photo shoot with the FCC, that’s how. → Read More
On Tuesday, Apple announced that late last month, they closed a deal to acquire Intrinsity — the Texas-based chip maker responsible for the A4 chip used in the iPad.
Word has it that Intirinsity cast the voodoo that allowed the A4 chip in the iPad to clock up to 1Ghz without destroying battery life. → Read More
Online media company Internet Brands (aka INET) today announced the acquisition of ExpertHub, a network of websites that connects consumers with attorneys and other professionals. The network will get folded into the company’s Money and Business vertical.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it is perfectly in line with Internet Brands’ growth-through-acquisition strategy. The INET CrunchBase profile lists 10 small purchases in the last 3 years alone, and its portfolio of brands is currently 100+ strong. → Read More
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=11266224&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1 Nokia N8 first HD video sample from Nokia Conversations on Vimeo. After a heady excoriation of the N8 based on pre-release hardware surfaced this week, it looks like Nokia is trying hard to convince us that the N8 is still the phone to beat. → Read More
On their Facebook page today, US Cellular today teased an “around July” release for the HTC Desire (previously known as the Bravo).
The device, in case you didn’t know, is basically a Nexus One in Sheep’s (or HTC’s) Clothing (which includes Sense UI), but with a few differences. → Read More
It’s done. AOL has officially sold instant messaging service ICQ to Russian investor DST for $187.5 million. In a release, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said “As AOL continues its turnaround effort, we’re fortunate to find a great home for ICQ with DST.”
Rumors of ICQ’s possible sale were first reported last November. We’d heard speculation that Naspers was interested last year but dropped out of the bidding process. Back in December, we also heard Google and Skype were interesting in buying up ICQ. The final price falls below AOL’s rumored asking price of around $200 to $250 million. → Read More
AOL just released its financial results for the first quarter of 2010, reporting another drop in total revenues.
If revenue dropped 17% year-over-year in the last quarter of 2009 compared to the same period a year before, its total revenues for the past quarter were down a painful 23% compared to the first quarter of 2009.
AOL has disclosed that it has sold ICQ to Digital Sky Technologies for $187.5 million in cash, and that it is still considering a sale or shutdown of social networking service Bebo this year. → Read More
I just got out of a Yahoo! press conference in London where I got an opportunity to talk briefly with Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz.
The topic on everyone’s lips was Yahoo’s rumored talks with Foursquare, so I asked her what she thought of TechCrunch’s advice to the location-based startup: don’t sell out to Yahoo!.
Bartz’s response: “It depends how much money they want.”
Listen to the full audioboo below. → Read More
Garmin-Asus today announced their second Android-powered phone, the A10 (for reasons unknown, they’re seemingly not calling it a nuvifone).
Just like the nuvifone A50, the device aims to be a pedestrian navigation device (as in, for pedestrians, not a boring navigation device), and will come with Garmin’s navigation software and maps pre-loaded. → Read More
Steven Frank Unboxing the iPad The iPad POS system, coming soon to a restaurant near you Review: Energizer Recharge Smart Charger Close the Internet, we’re done: The 4-port chicken burger USB hub CrunchGear meetup this Thursday in Lexington, Kentucky → Read More
Tremor Media is already the largest online video ad network in the U.S., and the company says it’s been profitable since 2009. Now the company just closed a large $40 million series D financing to accelerate its product R&D and expand into “other media channels” (TV perhaps?).
The round was led by the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth Fund, with some money coming from DFJ proper and Triangle Peak Partners. Previous investors also put in more money, including Canaan Partners, European Founders Fund, Masthead Venture Partners, Meritech Capital Partners and SAP Ventures. This round doubles the total capital Tremor has raised since launch to almost $80 million. → Read More
Whoa.
As you may have heard, Apple filed a massive lawsuit against phone-maker HTC nearly two months ago. Apple is alleging that HTC is infringing on over 20 of its iPhone patents. While HTC makes phones for a number of partners, it’s pretty clear that this is Apple going after Google’s Android platform indirectly. And now Google may have just found an unlikely ally in this fight: Microsoft.
Yes, the software giant, which makes the rival Windows Mobile (and soon Windows Phone 7) phone software has announced a deal with HTC that allows them to license their patented technology. That may make some sense since HTC also makes Windows Mobile phones. But the key to this is right there in Microsoft’s statement on the matter, “Microsoft Corp. and HTC Corp. have signed a patent agreement that provides broad coverage under Microsoft’s patent portfolio for HTC’s mobile phones running the Android mobile platform” (Emphasis mine) → Read More
Opera just released its latest State of the Mobile Web report, in which it zooms in on the popularity of its iPhone application, which was approved for the App Store just a little over two weeks ago.
We already knew a lot of people were seemingly eager to try out the alternative browser on the iPhone – the app saw 1 million dowloads on its first day in the store.
But how is it holding up now? → Read More
When it comes to media management for your portable electronics, there’s the iTunes/iPod goliath, and then there’s everyone else. In the last six months or so we’ve seen the competition in the second category heat up quite a bit, with applications like doubleTwist and Songbird offering strong alternatives to Apple’s dominant media app. Dazzboard is another of these iTunes alternatives that’s taking a different approach: it’s entirely browser based (though you need to install a small plugin). It’s been available for Windows since last summer, and today it’s launching for Mac.
Dazzboard allows users to sync media and playlists to mass storage devices, like most non-Apple MP3 players and Android phones. Along with the standard music, photo, and video syncing you’d expect from an iTunes alternative, the application also lets you to sync content with web services including YouTube, Facebook and Flickr. → Read More
Look, I get the porn thing. Well, sort of. But now Apple has gone too far.
iSealClub is the latest app to be rejected from the App Store. In it, you yes, club seals. I’m shocked — shocked! — that Apple would reject such an app.
Developer Matthew Smyth writes: → Read More
Ooyala, a video platform for publishers, is testing a pay per view product with ABC for at least one show, we’ve learned. ABC’s 10 things I hate about you currently shows a 2 minute preview on the ABC Family website, and then displays a message that the full episode can be purchased for $0.99.
Paypal is the only pay option. If you click on it, a confirmation page pops up clearly showing that the payment is being made to Ooyala, not ABC. There are no commercials during the episode.
This is not a product that Ooyala currently offers that we know of, and we’ve reached out to the company for comment. Screenshots below: → Read More
Looks like the Verizon/Vodafone exclusivity on the Kin 1 and Kin 2 might be short-lived — or at least, someone at Microsoft is already prepping for the day when it’s over.
Days before the Kin 1 and 2 were made official, a ROM hacker known only to the internets as Conflipper published screenshots pulled from an early copy of the Kin OS. After a bit more digging, Conflipper just stumbled upon some more goodies: Kin system provisioning files for other carriers. Lots.. and lots of other carriers. → Read More
Editor’s note: The following excerpt is from Mastering The VC Game, a new book by Jeffrey Bussgang that goes on sale Thursday. It tells the backstory of Twitter from the perspective of founder Jack Dorsey, from his early obsession with couriers and his attempts to create a better dispatch system to his “Aha” moment with Twitter (“What if we simply set status, archive it on the Web, use SMS to do it, and it all happens in real time?”) to why the company picked Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures as its first venture investor (“I want a VC who is always thinking a few steps ahead of me”). Bussgang interviewed both men, and details how the VC and entrepreneur clicked in the second half of this excerpt. The first part recounts the tale of how Dorsey came to invent Twitter.
Jack Dorsey (a.k.a. @jack in the lingo of the Twitterverse) founded Twitter, the social networking and microblogging site where users—Twitterers—post very short (140 characters, tops) updates known as tweets. The concept for Twitter came out of Jack’s lifelong fascination with mapping the real-time movements of people and things within complex environments. “Since I was very small, I’ve been fascinated by how cities work,” Jack told me in his typically straightforward way. “I always got really excited when I thought about visualizing them, specifically around maps. What would you place on a map to show how a city worked?” → Read More
Before there was even an App Store, I knew there was something to UrbanSpoon. Several million downloads and a sale to IAC later, I can safely say I was right. Now the team behind it is trying to capture the magic all over again with its new free iPad app.
On the face of it, UrbanSpoon for the iPad may not seem as useful as it is for the iPhone. After all, most people don’t just whip out their iPad on the street when they’re looking for a restaurant (though some may when the 3G version hits, who knows). But plenty of dinner choices are made right before you leave the house — and that’s what UrbanSpoon for the iPad is perfect for. → Read More
Joy! New apps. If you’re a Zune HD owner, fire up the ol’ girl and get downloading. This Labyrinth game looks pretty cool, and the Zune HD’s accelerometer is pretty responsive, so it should be good. Now give me a Mahjjong game and I’ll be set for life. → Read More
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