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
Are you hankerin’ for some hot 4G action, but a little worried that the new tech could add a premium on top of the handset price? Well, lucky for you I have some good news: The new hotness — the Sprint EVO 4G — is rumoured to cost only $199 on contract from Best Buy. → Read More
Every year, like the swallows returning from Capistrano or the tourists returning to Disneyworld Paris, Nokia releases a flagship phone. Sadly, the boatwrights at Nokia haven’t dropped a winner in nigh on three years now and, if early reports are to believed, their new N8 is not looking seaworthy. The N8 looks like the Motorola Devour and has a 3.5-inch OLED, capacitive touch screen, and all of the fun things you expect like compass and accelerometer. On paper, it seems great. It also uses Symbian^3 which, again, according to early reports, its just like Symbian^1 and Symbian^2. In other words, the more things change at Nokia, the more they stay the same. → Read More
Mobile Ad Network AdMob has released its monthly mobile metrics report for March, which takes a close look at Android OS traffic. In March 2010, there were 34 Android devices from 12 manufacturers available to consumers. In AdMob’s network in March 2010, 11 devices accounted for 96 percent of Android traffic, up from two devices in September 2009. The three primary versions of the Android OS all drove significant traffic in March 2010 – Android 1.5 (38 percent), Android 2.0/2.1 (35 percent) and Android 1.6 (26 percent). Motorola and HTC were the leading Android device manufacturers with 44 percent and 43 percent of respective traffic.
According to AdMob, Motorola Droid was the leading Android handset in March 2010 generating 32 percent of Android traffic, while the Google Nexus One drove only two percent of Android traffic. It’s surprising that Google’s Nexus one generates so little traffic, considering Google’s claims of profitability and success from the device. → Read More
Java developers may have good news to celebrate today. Salesforce.com and virtualization giant VMware are partnering to launch VMforce, a enterprise Java Cloud platform to enable Java developers to build apps off of Force.com. Salesforce is leveraging the Java development framework which was acquired by VMware when the company bought SpringSource for $420 million. SpringSource provides a development platform for engineers to build enterprise Java apps.
The launch of VMforce is significant because it brings a mission critical deployment environment for enterprise Java apps in the cloud. Previously, Java developers had limited environments to deploy applications in the cloud. VMforce aims to provide a cloud-based application platform to the 6 million enterprise Java developers, including the 2 million members of Spring community. The offering allows Java developers to tap into Salesforce’s Force.com application, which provides a cloud-based platform to run and operate business applications. Developers can access the Force.com database, workflow, analytics, search, and Chatter profiles and feeds. → Read More
Here at MobileCrunch, we love numbers. We especially love numbers that make good stories. And we more especially love numbers that make good stories about phones. And so we love it when AdMob packages together data from 18,000 mobile ad publishers and sends us a little PDF detailing what they’ve found. AdMob (which is being acquired by Google) released its March 2010 Mobile Metrics Report today. For this report, AdMob gathers data from the 18,000 mobile websites and applications that leverage AdMob for their advertising services. Because AdMob is the largest advertising platform on mobile with 40% market share, they do have a large pool of data to pull from. However, the data has some obvious selection bias and isn’t the best for cross-platform comparisons. That said, the report showed the clear stratification of the Android handset market. Whereas in September 2009, there were only 2 major Android handsets, there are currently 11. In September, HTC dominated Android with HTC devices accounting for 96% of all Android web traffic. This month, Motorola took that throne, and accounted for 44% of Android web traffic. HTC was close behind with 43% of requests and Samsung sat at an abysmal 9%. → Read More
The event planning business is a competitive space, with a number of companies and startups competing for a piece of a very lucrative pie. All-in-one party planning platform MyPunchbowl is opening up a new revenue stream today by licensing its technology to outside companies. And the startup has already hit gold. MyPunchbowl has signed a licensing deal to distribute its planning platform on the Oriental Trading Company, one of the U.S.’s largest direct merchants of party supplies, arts and crafts, toys and novelties. While financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, we heard from a source that the transaction was worth “millions of dollars.”
MyPunchbowl allows users to create beautiful online invitations and track RSVPs. The platform also provides tools that let you find supplies, organize an after party and even set a date, via an algorithm that recommends the best date for your party. The site also allows you to set up gift registries, save-the-dates, message boards, integrate Google Maps’ to display the location, and share comments, photos, and videos. Basically, MyPunchbowl helps you plan and organize an event from start to finish. → Read More
Heads up bargain hunters, it looks like those crazy wooters are at it again. That’s right, we got ourselves a woot off. → Read More
Enclose your tub in a fire truck so your kids don’t drown Plant face mask takes cutting down on your carbon footprint to the extreme Bring the retro-bowling arcade experience home These handmade wooden computer peripherals are the closest thing to heaven on earth Sony to stop manufacturing Floppy discs after 30 years → Read More
Sony just can’t seem to leave well enough alone, it turns out that they have managed to redesign the RSX GPU to make it even smaller and more efficient. A recent tear-down by Japanese fansite PocketNews showed off the fact that they Nvidia GPU used in all the PS3 Slim units has been reduced to an even smaller size since launch. → Read More
Childhood diabetes sucks, there’s no way around it. Testing is annoying and uncomfortable for adults, much lets kids, and the testing technology isn’t exactly what you’d call fun or interesting. Bayer is trying to make it better though, by creating a fun way to test blood glucose levels using a Nintendo DS. → Read More
We’ve been tracking mobile payments provider Zong since 2008 – in a nutshell, it lets you pay for things, particularly virtual goods online, via direct billing to your mobile phone. Despite heavy competition from well-backed boku, the service has emerged as a leader in alternative payments. Facebook likes them so much they made them the mobile payment provider for Facebook Credits.
See our post Mobile Payments Getting Traction On Social Networks, But Fees Are Sky High from last year for a deeper dive on their business.
Early this year the company was spun off from its European parent, Echovox, and Echovox founder David Marcus moved to the U.S. to run the fast growing Zong. The company has now closed a new round of financing, its first as an independent company. Matrix Partners led the $15 million round, and partner Dana Stadler joined Zong’s board of directors. → Read More
“I just think Twitter as a form of communication, I think it’s over to be honest with you.”
That was musician John Mayer during an onstage interview in Hollywood recently.
Mayer has had an interesting history on Twitter. A year ago, there were reports that Mayer and his girlfriend, actress Jennifer Aniston, broke up because he was more interested in tweeting than hanging out with her. Then, this past December, Mayer decided that he needed a break from Twitter (and other social networking services) with his one week “Digital Cleanse.” But he came back, and has since then gained some 500,000 new followers, pushing him past 3.2 million, and making him one of the most followed people on the service (he’s only about 500,000 followers behind President Obama). → Read More
Behavioral targeting is all the rage with online display advertising right now, and video search engine blinkx is bringing it to video. For the past few years, blinkx has offered contextual video advertising through its Ad Hoc program, which matches ad keywords against a speech-to-text translation of the video, as well as all the tags and titles associated with that video. “We are extending targeting in Ad Hoc from contextual to behavioral,” says CEO Suranga Chandratillake.
He explains the new targeted advertising product in the video below (I caught up with him last week as he was passing through New York City). Overall, blinkx powers 17.5 million video searches a day across its network, which reaches more than 60 million people a month. But for now, the behavioral targeting will work only on blinkx.com, which is a small part of its overall reach. Using cookies, blinkx will assign psychographic profiles to people base don what they watch. It will start with nine profiles, including Yoga Moms, Digital Dads, Gossip Girls, Adventurers, and Infonauts. → Read More
