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
Well, I’ll be. Thanks to the efforts of an intrepid CrackBerry forum-goer, we have yet another BlackBerry 9670 picture to ogle. And this time, it has company! → Read More
Google made a small acquisition today of an Israeli startup called LabPixies, which is probably best known for its Flood-It! game on the iPhone (it’s the new Tetris). But LabPixies also creates tons of games in the form of iGoogle gadgets, Facebook apps, Hi5 games, MySpace games, and Android apps. Google did not disclose the price of teh acquisition, but the number going around Israeli venture capital circles is $15 million to $25 million. (TheMarker, in Hebrew, also reports $25 million as the price). Not bad for a startup that only ever raised $1 million in angel funding back in 2008.
Google bought LabPixies for the talent to add to its Israeli R&D center, and to create better apps across both Web and mobile platforms. It is also the first Israeli-headquartered startup ever bought by Google. → Read More
We’re about to get yet another 3D display. This time, it’s Toshiba Mobile Display Corp. that’s prepping such a screen, an autostereoscopic (glasses-free), 21-inch 3D HD display “for use in next-generation 3D monitors”, to be more exact. Toshiba says the main selling points is that its new “integral imaging system” with 9-parallax design makes it possible for users to view 3D images from a wider range of viewing angles. → Read More
For a long time, if you wanted to take advantage of Boost Mobile’s $50 Monthly Unlimited plan, you had to put up with a few disadvantages. The biggest, of course, was the fact that you were stuck using their sketchy iDEN network. Not only that, you had to do it with a handset that was (more often than not) as ugly as sin. Ever since Boost has embraced CDMA with open arms though, complaints on both counts have been addressed rather nicely. Except — except there’s one thing that the Boost handset lineup has been sorely missing. Color! → Read More
3D is pretty hot right now. There’s the movies, the TVs, the games, the handhelds, and, well, why not the mobile phones?
Photos of a rumoured 3D phone by Motorola surfaced today, and while the screen on the device looks 2D on my monitor, there is reason to believe that the screen is, in fact, a 3D thingo. → Read More
Japan loves Apple, there’s no doubt about it. The brand is one of the most popular tech brands in the country. iPods, Macs and even the iPhone are selling like hot cakes. But apparently, big A, or at least its Japanese subsidiary, is getting a bit arrogant in the process. According to The Nikkei (“Japan’s Wall Street Journal”), Apple Japan today ordered a number of major online retailers to stop offering all of their products online. → Read More
Straight from the horses mouth, comes the news that the latest incarnation of every suit-totin’, email-checkin’, business-type’s favourite phone OS (that is, BlackBerry OS 6.0) will be released this Summer.
During an analyst talk today, RIM co-chief Mike Lazaridis showed off the first official teasers of the new OS. → Read More
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