Mind-reading devices are nothing really new, but Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) apparently sees a huge potential for that market in the near future. The MIC will join forces with selected private tech companies to develop and commercialize robots and consumer electronics that can be controlled through thought. The project kicks off this fiscal year and is supposed to end by 2020. → Read More
The first time the world ever saw the original iPhone, they saw a pair of clownfish, emerging from a tangle of anemone, set as the lockscreen wallpaper. Pulled straight from OS X’s wallpaper collection, this image would go on to be used in countless first-gen iPhone marketing materials; wherever the iPhone 2G went, so did the clownfish. Now, take a closer look at that BlackBerry OS 6.0 sneak preview video from earlier. Skip to the 50 second mark. Notice anything funny? It’s.. the same.. clown fish. → Read More
It’s only taken about a billion years, but the Zeemote, your friendly neighborhood analog Bluetooth controller, has finally started supporting Android. Their new SDK for 1.6 and higher will allow developers to enable Zeemote input in “a matter of hours,” though the real question is whether there are enough games worth playing with the thing on Android? → Read More
So a funny thing happened to me the other day. I ran a little contest to give away the Time is Money calculator and clock. A guy named Tim won the TIM clock, which was pretty funny. I asked Tim for his mailing address, and he lives in lovely Lexington, KY. Funnily enough, I’m heading there this weekend to visit a friend! So I offered to personally deliver the TIM clock to Tim. And then I thought, hey, let’s make it a meetup! → Read More
We always keep the list of launching startups and products at our big events strictly confidential until the day of launch. But we’re finalizing the list of launching companies at TechCrunch Disrupt this week, and we usually give out a single teaser prior to the event. We’re excited that Comcast will be launching a new product called Tunerfish on May 24 in New York at Disrupt.
What’s Tunerfish? We’re not saying, but we think you will be suitably impressed. The Plaxo team (Comcast acquired Plaxo in 2008) is behind the new product, led by former Plaxo VP of Marketing John McCrea (John’s blog is here). Tunerfish may or may not have something to do with Comcast’s ambitious Fancast plans. → Read More
A company called Lecere is working on an iPad Point-of-Sale system (POS != what you think). The system is compatible with the iPad and the iPod Touch and allows restaurants to add portable POS systems for under $2,000. Me, I’d worry about gankage and breakage, but it’s definitely something you’ll soon see in popular restaurants all over the world very soon. → Read More
iPod speaker docks are still big business and Pioneer just announced three solid high-end contenders. Whether you’re looking for an audio-specific model or a feature-packed system, one of these models will likely fit the bill — as long as you can pony up the cash for the high admission cost. → Read More
Pro Tip: If you mute your speakers, these people look absolutely insane. → Read More
The Archos 5 Internet Tablet just got a bit cooler. It finally has access to paid apps from the Android Market thanks to the latest firmware. This solves one of the biggest gripes we’ve heard about the small Android tablets. Previsously users could only download the free Android apps, not the preimum apps that cost something. This is actually a significant move in the Android tablet market, a trend we hope is followed by others. → Read More
The last time I paid attention to rechargeable batteries was probably back in the early 1990s. We had this huge recharging tech that allowed you to recharge all sorts of batteries – none of which we owned – so we were limited to recharging the D cells we had and used in, as I recall, some kind of remote controlled boat.
Anyway, Energizer has brought the battery charger into the 21st century by adding an LCD display that shows current charge level and, get this, hours left until a full charge.
There’s not much to say here. You can charge AA and AAA batteries – not at the same time – and the $19.99 kit includes four AA batteries, which is nice. → Read More
Another day, another MySpace executive resignation. Dani Dudeck, Vice President of Global Communications, has resigned from MySpace, says a source, and will shortly become the top communications executive at Zynga. Her new title will be General Manager of Corporate Communications.
It was just a week ago that MySpace execs Ali Partovi and Hadi Partovi announced that they were leaving the company. Two days before that the top two execs at Slingshot Labs, MySpace’s research and development arm, resigned. And the list goes on and on and on.
Will the last person to leave please turn out the lights? → Read More
Nokia’s not very happy right now. Just days before they officially announced their new flagship phone, the N8, someone managed to get their hands on an early prototype. Sound familiar?
Unlike Apple’s prototype iPhone, Nokia’s leaked N8 actually booted up, bearing its early software — and all of its early faults — for judgement. → Read More
Will digital books will ever match printed ones for sheer reading pleasure? What about comic books and graphic novels? I think it depends on what device you are reading them. One of the most visually stunning apps on the iPad, for instance, is the Marvel Comics reader. You just swipe from page to page, and when you tap on a frame it becomes larger and moves forward. The swiping gives the comics a sense of motion you don’t get on paper.
A startup called Graphic.ly is taking a similar approach and adding social elements. It recently came out of beta with an AIR app for desktops which includes a digital comic reader, store, and social activity feed. Apps for the iPad, iPhone, Android, and Windows 7 are coming soon. And eventually it will exists as native Web app as well. → Read More
Dear people who yelled at me when I said netbooks were garbage: I was right. IDC is reporting that sales of netbooks running the Atom platform are flat. Why? Well, first off people have a little cash so they want to buy something nice for themselves instead of a $350 junkbook. Competition from Netbooks that use processors from United Kingdom-based ARM–commonly referred to as “smartbooks”–and tablets, such as the iPad, will also be a factor in the Atom-based Netbook slowdown, Rau said. In the first quarter of this year, Atom processors as a percentage of Intel mobile processors fell to 20.3 percent, compared with 24.3 percent in the fourth quarter of last year and 23.5 percent in the third quarter, according to Rau, citing figures to be published later this week. “Pretty much all of last year, it was in the 23, 24, 25 percent range. So, 20 percent coming into Q1–that’s a noticeable change,” he said. → Read More
Break out a blank DVD and fire up x264! The folks behind x264, the freeware h.264 encoder, have announced Blu-ray compatibility. That means you’ll be able to burn a DVD containing h.264 video that will play on your standard-issue Blu-ray player. That’s good news if you still burn DVDs, something I haven’t done in for something like a year, and even then it was for someone else. Go away, plastic discs. → Read More
EnergySavvy, a one stop shop web application that helps homeowners become more energy efficient, has raised $315K in new financing from a number of angel investors, including Mike Galgon, founder of aQuantive led this round; and Karl Siebrecht, CEO of AdReady. The startup previously raised $580k in seed financing last year.
Seattle-based EnergySavvy allows users to quickly get an energy score for their homes plus an estimate of their potential for energy savings. The application actually builds a simulation of your home and then compares it to an ideally energy efficient version of your home. The site will then find all applicable tax credits and rebates and make a slew of recommendations to help your home become more energy efficient. → Read More
Steve “The Animal” Wildstrom posted a follow-up to the story that colleges were banning the iPad because of some problem with connectivity? Well, they aren’t. They’re “examining” the iPad and telling students that they may not work under their networks, but they’re not banning them outright. Steve writes: → Read More
The dedicated GPS market is slowly but steadily shrinking as smartphones gain the same abilities, but yet the major players keep rolling out new devices. The TomTom Go Live 1000 bucks the trend of a semi-smart connected device and instead adds a ton of storage on top of a powerful setup to run a WebKit-based UI along with a ton of connected apps. This just might be the PND we’ve been waiting for — too bad it’s a few years late. → Read More
USB Chicken Burger 4-Port Hub allows you to connect 4 different USB devices. It’s another little fancy stuff on your desk. What, no Double Down? → Read More
As we noted earlier, mobile ad network AdMob has released its monthly mobile metrics report for March, which takes a close look at Android OS traffic. One interesting stat that was hidden in the report was that Android ad traffic overtook iPhone traffic in the U.S. for the month of March.
According to the report, Android traffic in the U.S. increased to 46 percent of operating system share compared to 39 percent for the iPhone operating system. Worldwide, the iPhone OS still took the top spot, taking 46 percent of the OS share, with Android phones seeing 25 percent of impressions. AdMob measures mobile ad impressions, which is a proxy for overall traffic. → Read More
