These two wall clocks, both designed by Giha Woo and Shingoeun for German design festival DMY 2010 (previously, previouslier), are dual pinnacles of elegance. The integration of the batteries on the right clock is so simple and fun that it makes me want one immediately. The Bent clock on the left is a bit more conceptual, but can’t you see one of these being installed in newsrooms around the… → Read More
Good news iPhone 4 users; despite being being told that the free bumper (or case) wouldn’t be shipping for 3-5 weeks, word on the internet is that many people are starting to receive shipping notifications. So heads up if you’ve already ordered your free case or bumper, and a gentle reminder to go and do so if you haven’t already. Apparently this isn’t an isolated incident… → Read More
I’m not a skateboarder, but I’ve been in the world long enough to be skeptical of designs that leapfrog existing ones in weird ways. This one, for instance, trades the ability to flex the deck for a number of extra wheels, supposedly making it possible to carve at a lower angle than on a traditional board. Can such a design really be practical? → Read More
A new option has just appeared in Twitter’s “Settings” menu called “Twitter Media.” This appears to indicate that inline image and video sharing is making its way to Twitter.com shortly. The option appears on my account, but checking the box does nothing so far. [update below]
If this is indeed the case, Twitter is once again emulating some of the functionality third-party sites are building on… → Read More
It’s interesting to see pictures of areas of your city or town from the past, and it can be even more interesting to try to reproduce those pictures. Typically, it’s very difficult to get everything to line up exactly right, but researchers at MIT are developing software to automate the process. → Read More
Short version: A powerful and attractive handset held back by a few interface quirks and matters of taste. The Galaxy S series still is probably the best large (as opposed to medium, or extra-large) Android handset on the market as of this review. → Read More
There’s a new mystery on the web today. In an otherwise boring video about “Google Lookup in Google Docs,” the search giant appears to have inadvertently revealed a new Google Docs product called “Punch.” So what on Earth is it?
The blog Google Operating System (which spotted the feature) has its guess: “Maybe Google Punch is a free-form document that lets you combine data from other documents… → Read More
Today’s adjustment of the DMCA has far-reaching legal implications, which will only be evident after a few weeks, months, or even years as various parties exploit them however they can. I’m going to let the experts play in that sandbox. But one of the new rules seems to have had a specific target in mind: Apple. To wit:
“(2) Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute… → Read More
When the Transition, one of the world’s first flying cars intended for consumers, had its maiden flight, I suggested they could get the function down first, then make something cool-looking later. Yeah, not so much. → Read More
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/22881388001?isVid=1 One of the unexpected hits at E3 this year was Child of Eden, a spiritual sequel to the mesmerizing classic rail-shooter Rez. Unfortunately, few videos exist of it actually being played. This one showed up Friday but we missed it; it looks great, very Rez-like, and although the lag of the Kinect-based controls is evident, I… → Read More
The Internet has been quietly turning out Apple rumors over the last few weeks. Something about new Mac Pros here and new iMacs there and a multi-touch desktop trackpad thingie. It might all come to the surface tomorrow if John Gruber of the Internet is believed. → Read More
The Chevy Volt is slowly and surely creeping towards dealers and GM is set to unveil the price tomorrow. At 12:00 pm ET Joel Ewanick, VP of US marketing, will make the announcement at the Plug-In 2010 Conference in San Jose, California.
Of course a lot has changed in the three year span it has taken the Volt to hit production. Nearly every major car company either already sells a few hybrids or… → Read More
Earlier today on the Ron & Fez show on Sirius XM, the great Ron Bennington made an astute point: Comic-Con may be too big for its own good. It used to be a place where geeks and nerds could get together to talk about storyline inconsistencies in the latest Batman series. Now? It’s just as much about A-list-ish celebrities “being seen” and hawking their trash as it is celebrating the… → Read More
It looks like Yelp is looking to cash in on the local deal craze. As the folks over at deal aggregator YipIt first noticed, Yelp has recently been testing time-limited local deals in a select number of pilot cities.
The proof lies in a comment thread that began June 23, when a Yelp user noticed a deal running for $20 for $45 of services at Papillon salon. The user wrote that you can purchase the… → Read More
Google has long been touting the deployment of its productivity suite and Microsoft Office-killer Google Apps to the City of Los Angeles. The City planned to equip its 34,000 employees with Google Apps, replacing Novell’s GroupWise system, the e-mail technology provider that LA had previously been using. But unfortunately, the process of transitioning the government entity over to the… → Read More
The airline industry is pretty much the worst offender in terms of being amenable to change, hence the large user experience holes filled by market distruptors like Virgin America, JetBlue, and Southwest. Aside from cloning Richard Branson or crossing your fingers in hopes that skunkworks will change things internally, what’s an old school airline executive to do? → Read More
The electric sports car scene is heating up with Porsche‘s confirmation of a new all-electric sports car based on its Boxster. The company is conducting daily tests of three research cars to study battery systems and electric drive components.
Porsche President and CEO Michael Macht said in a statement that Porsche will “definitely be offering electric sports cars in the future,” but that the… → Read More
Earlier today, we noted that an update to Google Maps for Mobile was the clearest sign yet of Google going directly after Yelp. But it’s actually even more interesting than we thought.
Key to the new Google Maps for Mobile is Places, the new establishment-centric area which Google has been building up for about the past year or so. Places is basically an evolution of Google Local, which had been… → Read More
It’s like I’ve been shot in the heart. → Read More
It’s a trend that is highly unlikely to happen in the US due to its ubiquitous privatization of, well, everything. However in good old Europe, where control of the media is often under the hood of governmental institutions such as the BBC in the UK, or ARD in Germany, on the one hand, and in the hands of private media companies on the other, problems can arise.
More recently this has happened to… → Read More
If this were the AP, the following would be the lede to this next story: “UFC President Dana White wants to put pirates in a kimura.” (That, of course, assumed the AP funny lede guy even knows what a kimura is!) Man, those soft ledes are terrible. Moving on… yeah, Dana White is upset at pirates. The promotion has subpoenaed Justin.tv and Ustream.tv, demanding to know the names of people who… → Read More
Back in May, we first wrote about Pulse, an innovative and pretty news reading app for the iPad created by a couple of Stanford grads. Just about a month later, it hit for the iPhone as well. Today, they’re wasting little time graduating beyond the iUniverse with the launch of Pulse for Android.
Pulse is essentially a better-looking and more intuitive way to read your favorite RSS feeds. That’s… → Read More
Does the mere idea of a console exclusive game from Crytek make your blood boil? Yeah, me neither, but it’s sorta weird seeing the once PC-only developer embrace consoles so forcefully. The big one, obviously, is Crysis 2, being developed for the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. But then word hit at E3 that Crytek would be developing a 360-only game, Codename: Kingdoms. Hearts, they are broken! And is… → Read More
I was struck by how small, inaccurate and out of date this recent list of Angel investors in tech startups in Europe was. It’s time we published one on TechCrunch Europe. So feel free to leave your own nominations in the comments below. Meanwhile you can also contact me on mike AT mbites dot com to nominate tech angel investors, but remember to name the recent deals they’ve done. → Read More
Frackulous is an online video show dedicated to all things apps. We mention it because it’s a new show coming out of Europe, London specifically. It’s been created by Fixation Video, a.k.a. long-time online video journalist and presenter Susi Weaser and Will Head, a respected tech journalist and online video expert. Aimed at a more mainstream audience, it’s worth catching as a good catchup on the… → Read More
It’s no longer illegal under the DMCA to jailbreak your iPhone or bypass a DVD’s CSS in order to obtain fair use footage for educational purposes or criticism. These are the new rules that were handed down moments ago by the U.S. Copyright Office. This is really big. Like, really big. → Read More
Tomorrow is StarCraft II day and I’m probably not the only one that needs a little refresher on the storyline. IGN has us covered. → Read More
According to The Street, Roger Crenshaw, an “analyst,” suspects that Morotola will come out with a 10-inch tablet in November. Why? Who knows. What carrier? Don’t ask Crenshaw. However, clearly Moto needs to keep the Droid love coming and this seems like a good way to do it. A Droid Tablet, anyone? → Read More
While most of the Android-carrying world still waits on the edge of their seat for Android 2.2 (Froyo) to grace their handsets, a handful of engineers over in Mountain View are already hard at work on their next big thing: Android 3.0 (Gingerbread). Gingerbread, it seems, is getting far enough along in its development cycle that at least one or two engineers have it up and running on their kits. → Read More
SecondMarket, a trading platform for private company stocks, has just released it’s Q2 2010 report. Overall transactions were down from Q1 – around $51 million in transactions were completed, less than the $70 million traded in March alone at the end of Q1.
Volume may be down, but prices are still going up. Facebook is now being offered at $65/share, and there are bids as high as $60. In April… → Read More
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