Back in 2008, after milking the poor cash cow to death, Motorola decided to can their once crazy-popular RAZR series of phones. A good thing, too, as their Android line of phones are really quite good, and have helped them climb out of the dreaded red end.
But today over on Slash Gear, a prototype RAZR3 has risen from the grave to show us a twisted world where Motorola feature phones were the hotness, and smart phones were only for the geeks and their pocket protectors (like me…). It’s quite chilling. → Read More
I know you’re peachy-keen to start devving for the new Symbian^3 platform.
“The what?” you ask, as if this is the first you’ve heard of the Symbian^3 Web Development Kit.
You’ve made a website before, haven’t you? Maybe you’re even a web developer? Well, aren’t you glad to know that the dev kit for Nokia’s latest-and-greatest OS uses your favourite languages: HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.
You’ll be even happier to know that today Nokia removed that ugly “Beta” tag from the kit. → Read More
I know I’m not alone in my lust for decent phones with QWERTY keypads.
While I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the company of my touch-screen-only HTC Hero for 7 months now, I must admit that I am looking at other (more well endowed) phones while Hero’s back is turned.
But you know what? She’s ok with that. I guess that’s why we work so well together… even though I dream of the days where I could type without looking at the keyboard.
…and along comes Ally… → Read More
World’s largest telescope to open in Chile The Polaroid 300 brings back instant photo printing Self-leveling Acadalus tripod head keeps your horizons straight You can now play Swords with your Wii (thankyouvermuch) An ode to Radio Shack → Read More
The Norwegian software company has yet to make any announcements of its own, but Opera has acquired email service provider FastMail.FM, according to a message posted on the latter’s company blog.
The terms of the agreements are not disclosed, but the Australia-based company in a notice said it will continue to run its email service, which has been in operation for over 10 years. → Read More
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz bristles at outsiders opining on what Yahoo should be doing and not doing. An example – just a couple of days ago, when asked about our post saying that Yahoo shouldn’t buy Foursquare, she told TechCrunch EU editor Mike Butcher “I think it’s very easy for people to talk about what somebody else should do, but when confronted about it themselves they look at it a little differently.”
Along with lots of swearing, that’s been her key message since day one. Her first day on the job, in January 2009, she said “It’s been too crazy. People outside Yahoo deciding what Yahoo should do, shouldn’t do. That’s got to stop.”
But that didn’t stop her from giving out a little advice of her own yesterday. Her target? That one-trick pony Google. Says Bartz to the BBC: → Read More
There are few people who know the ins and outs of the web as well as Joe Hewitt. For the past decade, he’s had his hands deep in everything from Netscape, to AOL, to Firefox, to Facebook (where he currently works). Hewitt also knows a thing or two about the iPhone. He’s the one who first built Facebook’s excellent iPhone web app (before there were native apps on the iPhone), and then the native app — which is one of the best apps on the platform. So when he rants about something (as he does from time-to-time), people listen. And today he went on one such rant.
Following Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ post about Flash this morning, Hewitt went on Twitter and started going off with some of this thoughts. I asked Hewitt if I could recap them; his response, “sure, why not.” Hewitt, some may recall, quit iPhone development over his distaste for some App Store policies. Today, seeing a wave of anti-Flash talk on Twitter spurred by Jobs’ post, Hewitt started out: → Read More
Lala – where music will stop playing …
In a brief message that was just posted on the Lala.com website, Apple has announced that the service will be shut down on May 31st, 2010. Apple will not be accepting new users, and existing users will be able to log in only until the end of next month.
Does this mean we can start raising our hopes for iTunes in the cloud? → Read More
Awesome. So this January, it seems that Cameron found time in between money-counting sessions to pitch NASA about putting a 3D camera on the Curiosity Mars rover, set for a 2011 launch. Incredibly, they went for it. I’m guessing it had something to do with budget — probably something along the lines of “my movie is making more per month than your department does in a year, I got this one.” → Read More
Well, I know what my brother is getting for his birthday — in an alternate universe where I have $220 to spend on a novelty clock. He loves his “inexact time” clock. Time for a Quantum Leap! Or I could just get a second job. But enough about me and Scott Bakula. You’re here about what, exactly? The clock! Yes. Look, there it is! → Read More
Volkswagen just announced their latest gadget, the Bik.e – a folding electric bicycle designed to fit in the trunk of your car, in the space currently taken up by your spare tire. With a maximum range of 12.5 miles, I question whether it would be a good spare tire replacement, but I still like it. It is interesting to see a company like Volkswagen get into the electric bicycle concept though. → Read More
Here’s the thing: this coffee cup looks cool and all, but we’re really not hurting for a new kind of coffee cup. Ensuring that the coating on your paper cups is biodegradable means that you can just compost the cups — that’s what many of the cafes here in Seattle do. You can also buy reusable to-go cups already, though they’re still working out the kinks (silicone lids taste pretty weird). → Read More
The European Southern Observatory will construct the world’s largest telescope in Chile. They’re calling it the European Extremely Large Telescope, and it’s being constructed in Chile because the night sky there is totally clear some 320 days per year. → Read More
Hewlett-Packard has killed off its much ballyhooed Windows 7 tablet computer, says a source who’s been briefed on the matter.
The device was first unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at CES 2010 in January and was supposed to hit the market in mid 2010. But our source tells us that HP is not satisfied with Windows 7 as a tablet operating system and has terminated the project (something CrunchGear mentioned months ago).
HP may also be abandoning Intel-based hardware for its slate lineup simply because it’s too power hungry. That would also rule out Windows 7 as an operating system. → Read More
Whoa whoa whoa. Valve has officially announced Steam for Mac‘s release date: May 12. So says an e-mail straight from Valve HQ. Feel free to freak out. → Read More
Believe it or not, it’s actually quite hard to take an idea from concept to render to prototype to production. Sure, inside Microsoft you can do it in a couple hours (if they don’t assassinate the project), but what if you’re just a group of guys who want to put together a really awesome open-source handheld game console? We’ve had our eye on the Pandora for a long time, but the project has been stricken with delay after delay. What’s the deal? → Read More
Early this morning we got word of what sounded like a pretty major change for YouTube: some users are seeing banners inviting them to “Sign up for YouTube with your Facebook account!“.
That sounds a whole lot like YouTube is allowing users to skip having to create a Google account by letting them simply log in with their Facebook accounts, which would be a strange move strategy-wise. As it turns out, it’s simply a case of some questionable wording.
I’m not seeing the banner myself, but a YouTube spokesman says that clicking it will take you to the standard YouTube registration screen, where you fill out your information as usual. Once you’ve done that, your newly created YouTube/Google account will automatically be connected to Facebook via Facebook Connect, so that it pulls in your friends’ shared items. → Read More
For the past few weeks I’ve been struggling. I’m addicted to all these location-based iPhone apps, but of the big ones, really only Loopt has had a native iPad app ready to go from the beginning. Today that changes with the launch of Gowalla’s iPad app.
As we first previewed a month ago, the app looks amazing. The main page is a giant Google Map, and on it you can see where your friends are nearby. Clicking on their faces reveals where they are — or where they were when they last checked in. And how long ago they checked-in at that location. There’s also a side menu (in landscape mode — or a pop-over menu in vertical) that shows the stream of all your friends’ check-ins. From here you can do some of the newer Gowalla functions such as comment on check-ins. And yes, of course, you can check-in yourself. → Read More
Two nights ago, three former PayPal execs took the stage at Startup2Startup to look back at the early days of the payments company (and some of their blunders), as well as the culture at their current companies. The speakers included: Max Levchin, who co-founded PayPal and is now founder/CEO of Slide; Jeremy Stoppelman, who was PayPal’s VP of Engineering and is now the cofounder/CEO of Yelp; and David Sacks, who was PayPal’s COO and is now founder/CEO of both Yammer and Geni. Moderating the fireside chat was Dave McClure (a former PayPal employee himself), who cofounded Startup2Startup with Leonard Speiser.
The PayPal alums talked at length about the company’s history, including some of the horror stories they took part in (Levchin recounted one incident where he accidentally wiped out the only copy of PayPal’s master secret key used to decrypt every credit card on file at PayPal). The conversation then turned toward company culture, and which hot companies in Silicon Valley seemed poised to breed the most entrepreneurs. We’ve embedded videos of the full discussion below. → Read More
