http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=13648673&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=ff9933&fullscreen=1 I doubt anybody is going to keep this Firefox plugin installed for very long (the point is made after a few minutes), but big red boxes and airhorns blasting you in the face are a good way of saying “HEY. Your information is being transmitted to Google.” You can get the no-airhorn version, but it’s not quite as exciting. BWOOOOOOOOOO [via HardOCP] → Read More
Facebook may be in the middle of negotiating a deal to acquire the check-in service Hot Potato, but that didn’t stop most employees from stopping by the cafeteria at the headquarters in Palo Alto today to see hip hop artist Kanye West freestyle.
West, dressed in a suit, appears to be standing on a table as he lets loose. First, he raps a bit about getting laid. But then, cheered on by the crowd, he comes back to freestyle about a number of others things — and if you listen closely, you can even hear him diss Facebook rival Twitter (I’m not even sure those in the audience picked up on it). → Read More
Back in the dark ages, it used to be if you wanted a computer, you built it yourself. And I don’t mean order the parts and put them together, I mean soldering the chip sockets into a breadboard and assembling all the bits by hand. For whatever reason, computer enthusiast Matt Sarnoff misses the halcyon days of the Altair, and decided to build his own PC the old fashion way: with a hot piece of metal and some lead wire. Despite the fact that I’m pretty sure this makes him crazy, he’s quite good at it. Check out the video after the jump. → Read More
9to5Mac posted a video of the Magic Trackpad. Their Zapruderesque exegesis looks at the device from all sides, ensuring us that I will be bereft of a single thing when I line up tomorrow at the mall in order to be one of the first to own the strange, distended trackpad known as the Magic Trackpad. → Read More
We’re expecting to get official word on the D3100 next month; Nikon is currently planning a press event the week of August 16th-20th in Europe, which is pretty typical. It’s expected that there will be two events, one to announce the launch of new Coolpix cameras, and one to announce the launch of the previously rumored D3100, as well as some new lens. More details after the jump. → Read More
When we last left the intrepid research scientists at Intel, they had managed to hit 40Gbps throughput using something called the Avalanche Photodetector. It’s been two years since that report (yeah, this has been in development for a while), and the gang at Intel have not been idle, let me tell you. They’ve managed to improve the field of photonics to achieve throughput of 50 Gbps! While not as much of an advance as one might like to see in two years, this is still a respectable achievement. → Read More
We’re hearing from sources close to the deal that Facebook is in late stage negotiations to buy Hot Potato, the social activity service. The deal is not yet finalized from what we’re hearing, but could be at any moment.
Terms of the deal are likely still be negotiated, but it’s believed that this would largely be a talent acquisition for Facebook. Yes, another one.
Hot Potato raised a small $1.42 million Series A round late last year, so it should not be too expensive for Facebook to buy such a company. It would undoubtedly be much less than the supposed $50 million in cash and stock they paid for FriendFeed last year, for example. Hot Potato’s About page currently lists 8 employees. → Read More
Created by Jason Baptiste, PadPressed is a Wordpress plugin that makes any Wordpress blog look like a native iPad app when accessed from iPad. Bestowing upon your humble blog the iPad features we’ve come to know and love such as “swipe to advance” articles, touch navigation, accelerometer positioning and home screen icon support when you’re really jonseing for that authentic app feeling.
While Baptiste started with WordPress because 8.5% of all websites (including our own) are Wordpress but has grander aspirations, “We did Wordpress first because it’s the largest thing there is next we’re doing Tumblr, Posterous, Moveable Type, and then custom CMSs.” Exciting! → Read More
No idea if this is an actual licensed product, but it certainly looks cool. I’ll admit, when then the Canon mugs came out last winter I was jealous. I’m not a Canon guy, so I just resigned myself to the fact that I’d probably never have one. Then some popped up on ebay, but in a really limited run. I missed out on those too. → Read More
Apple must make a big, juicy target to lawyers trying to cobble together class-action lawsuits. They make promises in plain English that, as is the case with almost all advertising, don’t exactly pan out, but usually allowances can be made. Does Old Spice make you “smell like a man”? If you think a man smells otherwise, can you sue Old Spice for false advertising?
Similarly, when Apple says reading on the iPad is “just like reading a book,” are you going to sue Apple because unlike books, the iPad can overheat and shut itself down? It’s a free country, I guess, but someone’s going to have to pay those legal fees when the case gets thrown out amid uncontrollable laughter. → Read More
We’re releasing our final batch of 100 tickets now to our July 30 summer party at August Capital.
Before that party we’re also hosting an all day event – the Social Currency CrunchUp. You can see the full agenda here. Ron Conway and Paul Graham kick off the morning, and then lots of great product discussions will follow. We’ve also lined up a half dozen different local retailers to share their own experiences using social currency in the wild. Combo tickets for the conference and the party are here. → Read More
Wal-Mart, the biggest retail store in the U.S., has announced plans to attach RFID tags to certain articles of clothing, including jeans, underpants, and socks. Just the word alone—RFID—should set off your Spider Sense, but should you actually be afraid of shopping there from now on? I mean, there’s any number of things to be upset at Wal-Mart about, so where does the use of RFID fit in that anger matrix? → Read More
Pirates looking to illegally copy Android applications are about to face a new challenge: today, Google’s Android team announced that it is releasing a new application Licensing Service for Android. The service, which is meant to help developers secure their applications from piracy, forces apps to ping Google’s home server at regular intervals to verify that they were legitimately purchased. Fail that check, and the app can lock you out.
According to the Dev Guide, developers are free to decide how they want to deal with an application that is deemed to be pirated (a developer could disable the app entirely, or perhaps they could activate a trial mode prompting the user to purchase the real thing). → Read More
Hey you. Yeah, you Sony fanboi. You know who I’m talking to; you’re the guy that watching blogs for articles about the PS3, and defending everything Sony does with a rabid mindless worship that borders on fanaticism. You’ll be able to show your love of everything shiny, black, and Sony to the outside world now. Well, maybe not the “outside” world, since we all know you never leave your basement. → Read More
Beta 2 of iOS 4.1 has just hit the e-shelves of Apple’s developer center. You know the drill: developers, go get your download on. Everyone else, look on with a pinch of jealousy, and a heaping cup of gladness over the fact that you’ve got a few hundred thousand anxious developers beta testing the software so you don’t have to. We’re not hearing much in terms of new stuff — but if we do, we’ll let you know. → Read More
It’s hard to ignore the looming EV vehicle showdown between the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf even though the vehicles are totally different in nature and target market. While the Nissan Leaf is simply a beautifully-packaged electric vehicle with around a 100 mile range, the Chevy Volt takes a different approach by having a somewhat limited 40 mile EV range but an on-board gas-powered generator that will power the electric motor as long as there’s gas in the tank. GM is clearly targeting the a higher-end market with a $41,000 MSRP while the Nissan Leaf is a bit more down-market with a starting price of $32,000. That’s fine. There’s more than enough room in the world for both of the vehicles. There doesn’t really have to be a winner here. In terms of sales numbers, the Nissan Leaf will enter more markets than the Volt (or its Opel Ampera counterpart) initially anyway. GM only expects to sell about 10,000 Volts during the first year where Nissan already 17,000 Leaf pre-orders, 5,000 more than the first year estimate. Clearly both vehicles are highly anticipated, though, so comparisons will no doubt be made around workplace watercoolers from now on. Here’s what we know so far. → Read More
Last August, we first wrote about Olark, a Y Combinator-funded startup that gave e-commerce site owners a simple way to interact with their customers: an IM widget. Now, Olark is expanding the functionality of these IMs to include detailed information about that shopper in realtime, and partnering with Shopify to make it easy to install.
For example, with this new Olark tool, dubbed Shopping Cart Saver, a site owner can get an IM every time someone hits the site. And you can see the referrer indicating how they got there. While they’re there, you can see what pages they’re visiting and most importantly, what items they’re putting in their shopping cart. If a user has a question, this same IM window serves as your way to interact with them. → Read More
A Kyle, Texas company that makes utility scale power storage systems, Xtreme Power, nabbed a $29.5 million, series C round of venture funding the company announced today. The investment was co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners, the venture capital arm of The Dow Chemical Company and clean tech investors SAIL Venture Partners.
Xtreme Power aims to alleviate problems associated with renewable energy sources with utility scale, dry cell batteries and other technology. → Read More
Chatroulette founder Andrey Ternovskiy recently posted this strange missive detailing Chatroulette’s commitment to cleaning up its act. In battling the porn plague, Ternovskiy has resorted to tracking offending IP addresses and turning them into the police, among other things (I’m assuming the hilariously named “penis recognition software” wasn’t enough):
“While many people understood the concept of roulette, where sometimes you can lose the game – due to randomness, over time it became a major bottleneck in further development of the service, because of a certain difficulties with raising venture capital, legally operating on the United States territory and having to deal with negative feedback.”
The 5-inch Dell Streak is a curious little device. It’s clearly not for everyone, but even John Biggs is starting to enjoy the 5-inch device – and he’s a grumpy, burned-out gadget blogger. Anyway, Dell just went live with the pricing deets and they are kind of what we imagined. It will run $299 with a two-year AT&T contract and $549 without. If you sign up for a pre-order slot by tonight, you’ll get first dibs on the phone when it goes on sale. Our full review should hit shortly. Also, the Dell Aero smartphone should hit AT&T August 9th for $99.99 on contract and $299 off. That’s just in case you need another Android phone to muck up your buying decision. → Read More
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