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 deal through Yelp with your credit card. Yelp employee Olivia L. responded to say that Yelp was “testing it out for fun to see what kind of response it generates”. → 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 cloud-based system has seen a few speedbumps to say the least. In April, LA City administrators began questioning the move thanks to productivity, security and slowness issues with Google Apps. During that time, there was also the possibility of a delay in the full deployment of the system to employees because of these concerns.
On Friday, we learned that this delay became a reality, and Google missed its June 30 deadline to deploy Apps to all 34,000 employees. But today, at the launch of Google Apps for Government, a specialized version of the suite to meet government security needs, Google said the situation was in fact overblown. → 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 performance and cruising range must be comparable to existing sports cars. Greater efficiency and lower emissions are the company’s goals for the new vehicles. → 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 around for some time to pull in the best content for various local businesses. Previously, with Google Local, Google was using content they licensed to populate their review excerpts area. But apparently, that’s no longer the case. Google doesn’t have such an agreement with Yelp and yet Yelp content is appearing in Google Places.
And not only that, Yelp data often constitutes a lot of the review content. → Read More
It’s like I’ve been shot in the heart. → 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 stream UFC pay-per-view events. → 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 because the experience is visual and touch-based, rather than being a bunch of text you click on. The fact that it uses RSS also differentiates Pulse from its new rival Flipboard, which pulls in actual content rather than RSS in a way that may be legally murky. You may recall that Pulse was taken down from the App Store shortly after its iPad launch after the New York Times complained about the use of their content. This was especially odd since just 24 hours earlier, no less than Apple CEO Steve Jobs praised Pulse on stage during his WWDC keynote. But (and perhaps because of that) Pulse was quickly reinstated, and has stuck around with no problems since then. → 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 Crytek now planning on developing a PS3-only game? → 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 the price was $50/share.
Facebook accounted for 64% of total closed transactions, followed by Zynga with 12%. LinkedIn, Bloom Energy and Silver Spring Networks tied for third with 6% each. Twitter and MobiTV took most of the rest with 3% each. → Read More
Lot C0101 of the RedEye mini IR adapter for the iPhone and iPad have been recalled for structural issues. The plug can crack away from the case and cause problems. In fact, the plug is attached only with a small piece of adhesive tape, which reduces the total structural integrity to nil. → Read More
Perhaps you recall that late last year, Google was in discussions to buy Yelp. Despite a supposed offer of $550 million plus earn-outs, Yelp walked away from the deal. But that isn’t stopping Google for entering Yelp’s business. Today, Google continues their fast-moving assault on local and location with a revamped Google Maps for mobile.
Central to Maps for mobile 4.4 is Google Places, the newer component of Maps which shows you, you guessed it, places nearby. But it’s much more than just another layer in Google Maps, with this release on every Android phone (1.6 and later), there will now be a dedicated Places icon that appears in the Android app launcher. So yes, Google just basically gave Places its own new app. → Read More
This morning at a special press event in Mountain View, Google announced Google Apps for Government, a new version of Google’s suite of cloud-based enterprise applications that have been hardened to meet the government’s more stringent security restrictions.
Dave Girouard, Google’s President of Enterprise, kicked off the presentation with a few stats: every year, the federal government spends $76 billion on IT expenses. Another $50 billion is spent on IT by state and local governments. Google is looking to help.
Google says that this is the first multi-tenant cloud application suite that has received FISMA certification at a FISMA-Moderate level, which gives it the ability to store and serve sensitive (but not classified) information. Google’s Matthew Glotzbach says this encompasses 80-90% of all government information. → 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 performance and cruising range must be comparable to existing sports cars. Greater efficiency and lower emissions are the company’s goals for the new vehicles. → Read More
Let’s pretend that you don’t have very many geeky or sporty friends. It could happen. Say you wanted to try and iPad or a bike or a Kubb set. What would you do? Walk up to complete strangers? Ask them for theirs? Well, in a way, Snapgoods hopes you will.
Think of Snapgoods as Zipcar for stuff. You reserve an item – an iPad, a bike, a pommel horse, a chainsaw – pay a small amount per day ($10-$15 or more for pricier items), put down a security deposit using your Paypal account, and you pick up the item after meeting the lender or, barring that, you pick it up and drop it off at a place local to you both that acts as an escrow point.
In short, Snapgoods assumes that most people won’t break your stuff and that there are people out there who want to try or use your stuff for a few hours. This could be an iPad or, in a more practical case, a concrete drill. In order to ensure that the renter doesn’t break your stuff, they require a number of verification measures including SMS replies, Facebook connections, and “group” creation for different parts of each city. Most important, however, is that Snapgoods is hyperlocal. You’re not going to get offers for people in Kansas City (unless you’re in Kansas City). In fact, Snapgoods is New York only for now, and will be expanding over the next few months. → Read More
http://revision3.com/player-v6422 The PogoPlug gets an upgrade for business use, the US Navy tests a new laser weapon, using optics to communicate with terahertz pulses, 3D TVs keep coming at us, and an amazing video showcasing the Lagoa Multiphysics Engine. Join Cali Lewis for the tech news roundup on GeekBeat.TV #13. → Read More
