The Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien fight over the Tonight Show is long over. Leno soldiers on, and O’Brien is out mixing it up with real people on tour.
ut the resistance movement carries on, and Coco supporters (as O’brien is known) have found a bunch of outlets to vent their frustration. Some trick Leno into taking pictures supporting Coco. Others hang out on a Facebook page supporting him called “I’m with Coco / Conan O’Brien.”
But now there’s another way, and this one is likely to piss off NBC. Go to any Tonight Show clip on Hulu and check out the user added tags that appear in the mouseover. → Read More
Oh, LG Fathom; like the HTC HD2, you’re one of Windows Mobile 6.5′s last hurrahs — a final spirited cry as the hawks circle over head. Packing a 1Ghz processor, a full touchscreen and slide-out QWERTY keyboard, it’s a solid piece of hardware prematurely plagued to obsolescence by a dying operating system. Ah well.
On the upside, you’ll be able to get this thing for (relatively) cheap. One of our sources just sent over a shot of an LG Fathom shelf tag freshly printed from Best Buy’s inventory system, price and all. → Read More
Just a quick update for those tracking the Disrupt Hackathon. Pizza has been delivered, the Red Bull girls have made their rounds, and the group seems to be in high spirits. TechCrunch developer Andy Brett and I made the rounds this afternoon, chatting with developers (who came from places as close as New York and as far as Israel) to discuss their projects and their strategy for the evening. Many expected to use a combination of potent caffeine and quick naps to power through the session. Some offered quirkier solutions: one team toyed with the idea of napping in the beginning and working during the late hours (to sleep through the noisiest part of the day) and another set a hard deadline of 2 am so that they could be the most refreshed team during the presentation round. We’ll find out who makes it and what they’ve made tomorrow at 11am— and for those who can’t be here, we plan to Livestream the event as well. Until then, enjoy our brief video of Hackathon (Andy doesn’t make frequent video appearances so this is a real treat, bonus points if you find his 2 cameos). → Read More
Last last night (early this morning) there was some confusion about our post indicating that Android 2.2, Froyo, had started to roll out. Some thought we had Photoshopped the pictures (I wish I was that good at Photoshop), others though we were just using the developer build, and others thought we got some sort of special press copy. But rest easy people, I have in my inbox a confirmation from Google that says the following: “The roll out to Nexus One devices has begun!”
Naturally, I asked the company what the deal was with the roll out, since I was as surprised as anyone to see 2.2 ready to install on my device when I picked it up last night. After all, Google itself had just tweeted out that the new OS would be available on the Nexus One in the “next few weeks.” But that looks to be a solid under-promise, over-deliver — very nice, Google. → Read More
There are more dudes sitting at laptops here than I’ve seen in… well, at least since I left Seattle. But there are also some enterprising builder types taking advantage of the toys and junk gadgets donated to the Hackathon. They’re putting together noise machines, marker critters, and some other stuff I really can’t identify. I took some pictures. Here they are. → Read More
Google had another Oprah moment this past Thursday at the Google I/O conference, giving all 4,000 plus attendees the Evo 4G, the new HTC Android phone being sold via Sprint. The phone is set to be released to the public on June 4, but attendees have gotten a sneak peak of the impressive device. Of course, many of these lucky recipients have already been quick to start peddling the phone on Craigslist and eBay, for as much as $1200.
On eBay, ‘buy it now’ price points range from $600-$1200, with many at $650-$750 range. Prices are more reasonable on Craigslist’s San Francisco site, with many of the devices being offered at $500-ish (the range is between $450-$750). There were a few offers to purchase an Evo for $250, with one person willing to buy it for $500. → Read More
It’s on. The Disrupt Hackathon is fully underway, over 300 hackers are battling through the night to create the very best app, gizmo, robot (or whatever these crazy kids can come up with) within 24 hours. Thanks to the sponsorship of Facebook, Media Temple and Air BnB, the hackers will have access to a pile of Aero beds and all the essential food groups: pizza and caffeine (boxes upon boxes of Red Bull).
The Hackathon will have experts on hand to help participants with the APIs of Facebook, Yahoo!, SimpleGeo, Etsy, Mashery, MeetUp and Google. For those who want to get their hands dirty, there’s a scrapyard station in the back, complete with a Hungry, Hungry Hippo set, the circuit board for a crosswalk sign and a Winnie The Pooh in a wizard outfit (of course). Pictures ahead. → Read More
Lost will wrap up this Sunday. It’s about time, too. At least the story is actually ending, rather than drifting along until the show is canceled because of bad ratings. But still, I feel like there are too many loose ends that will not be answered tomorrow. This isn’t a sign of a clever mystery. It’s simply bad storytelling and so I submit to you the four reasons why Lost is actually a terrible TV show and not deserving of all the attention it got over the last six seasons. Here’s the obligatory *Spoiler Warning* tag although there is no way you’ll be able to avoid Lost news next week so you might as well get over it now. → Read More
Checking-in has so far mainly been thought about in terms of location. But there’s a growing idea that it can be ported to other things as well — such as checking-in when you’re watching a movie or television show to let others know. That’s the idea behind Miso, a product we first covered back in March following their first major movie partnership. Today, Miso has announced its seed financing and the alpha version of its website.
Previously, Miso only existed as an iPhone app. (It’s actually the second iPhone app the team behind Miso, BazaarLabs has come up with. Back at our Realtime Crunchup in November, they launched Flixup a sort of Rotten Tomatoes movie review aggregator based around what people are saying on Twitter.) But now, with a website, they should be able to broaden their reach. → Read More
Ford, like most modern manufacturing companies, is utilizing virtual reality tools at all levels of development. Gone are the days of designers and engineers hunching over drafting tables in a smoke-filled room, working on blueprints for what will next be molded out of clay. These days development is done on 20-foot ultra-high resolution displays with real world testing done in a virtual world. Designers can experience nearly every aspect of a future vehicle before any physical piece is constructed. Ford even employs virtual tools for the manufacturing phase to maximize efficiency there as well. I recently got a close look at a bunch of these tools and processes. I was granted access to everything from Ford’s gigantic full vehicle motion simulator to the gigantic video wall. These are some impressive toys. → Read More
Is Facebook just becoming the hottest new place to spread viruses and malware? This morning thousands of Facebook users are reporting that they have been hit by a malware attack in the form of a video of young bikini-clad women on a beach.
The link to the video is appearing on the walls of Facebook users, apparently posted by their friends, with a thumbnail which appears to be an image of a young woman’s bottom in a bikini.
The message reads: → Read More
While grandma flips through photo albums on her sleek iPad, government agencies (and most corporations) process mission-critical transactions on cumbersome web-based front ends that function by tricking mainframes into thinking that they are connected to CRT terminals. These systems are written in computer languages like Assembler and COBOL, and cost a fortune to maintain. I’ve written about California’s legacy systems and the billions of dollars that are wasted on maintaining these. Given the short tenure of government officials, lobbying by entrenched government contractors, and slow pace of change in the enterprise-computing world, I’m not optimistic that much will change – even in the next decade. But there is hope on another front: the Open Government Initiative. This provides entrepreneurs with the data and with the APIs they need to solve problems themselves. They don’t need to wait for the government to modernize its legacy systems; they can simply build their own apps.
The federal government’s open data initiative, data.gov, was launched exactly one year ago with 47 datasets of government information, by Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra. This has grown to more than 250,000 datasets. Hundreds of applications have already been built to harness this information. A few states and localities have also followed the lead, the most notable of which is San Francisco City. → Read More
Popbox becomes the first set-top box to support RealD 3D Meguru: Japan’s bamboo-powered electric car (videos) The “Get a Mac” Ads are gone Review: Two smokeless cigarette solutions, Green Nicotine and Ploom Pac-Man greets Google visitors → Read More
Sometimes there are advantages to staying up really late at night. I had just laid down in my bed to try and get some sleep before an early flight to New York tomorrow when I remembered I hadn’t charged my Nexus One. I reached over to my bedside table to grab it, and I see an alert letting me know a system update is available. Having just read numerous reports that Android 2.2 would be coming to the device in the “next few weeks” I figured this couldn’t be the new OS codenamed “Froyo.” But it was.
Yes, apparently Google is starting to roll out the Android 2.2 Froyo update to Nexus One devices right now. I just tried the EVO 4G (the newest Android phone which Google gave out at Google I/O this week) but 2.2 isn’t available for it yet. I guess being the “Google Phone” has its advantages. Nexus One owners, if you’re up, check for an update right now. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
