I think at one time or another, we’ve all bought a game and been disappointed in the quality. Perhaps you bought the game because it was a tie in to something you liked (the Evil Dead games in my case) or because you were fooled by clever product descriptions. For whatever reason, you bought the game, and it was a disappointment. Well, in a recent interview, THQ’s VP of Global Publishing Ian… → Read More
Those of us who went on the original Haunted House ride at Disneyland (or one of the variations at other parks) can testify to the magic and fun produced by the old-school analog effects. Unfortunately, the novelty of the old effects is somewhat lost on “kids these days,” who expect more thrill, and probably found the dated scare tactics a little fusty. Luckily, scaremonger Guillermo Del Toro… → Read More
The Funded’s Adeo Ressi’s prediction that 2010 will be the year of the angel investor, seems to be coming true.
In the second quarter, venture capitalists invested $6.5 billion, an impressive 34% increase from the prior quarter. Not so impressive? The amount of money they pulled in. According to Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association, venture capital funds only raised $1.9… → Read More
CloudCanvas, a startup incubated in the Founder Institute, has launched their free HTML5 image editing suite to the public today. The product aims to blend capabilities of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop into a single, easy-to-use web based offering.
CloudCanvas allows both novice doodlers and expert designers to create, store, edit and embed images into the suite. The suite, which supports both… → Read More
Here come the slates. Send in the slates. Todd Bradley, EVP, Personal Systems Group, for HP just announced that their Windows 7 tablets will arrive “this Fall” — something we suspected after said slates showed up on HP’s website with SKU numbers and all. The rumored (and almost certainly real) webOS slates were touched on tangentially, with the non-answer that we can expect… → Read More
You may or may not have heard of Mary-Jo Foley but she’s covers Microsoft. Like totally covers Microsoft. She’s as much as a Microsoft nerd as we are Apple nerds. That’s how serious she is.
Well, she bought an iPad. I know! WTF! → Read More
And now EA has said what we’ve all been saying: the Nintendo 3DS is quite the piece of kit. Granted, EA doesn’t used the same bit of forced Briticism that I just did, but the feelings are the same: Nintendo has a hit on its hands. It’s one that when one of us say it, but EA? → Read More
Analytics is a crowded space, with plenty of services looking to help you turn your visitors into engaged, paid customers. KissMetrics is the latest to join the fray, and it’s offering a solution that’s both straightforward and powerful. As it comes out of stealth, the company is also revealing its funding: in 2008 it closed a $1 million seed round led by True Ventures, and in mid-2009 it closed… → Read More
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=13537656&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=ff9933&fullscreen=1 It’s not exactly gadget-related, but this was too weird to pass up. A brewery in the UK has created what it says is the world’s strongest beer, at 110 proof: The End Of History. That’s not the weird part. Only 12… → Read More
Stardoll, the social gaming site for mostly female teenagers interested in fame, fashion and friends which has had over $10m invested in it, appears to be going for a break out moment. It’s going for a site redesign with a more upbeat modern appearance and more features to increase engagement and shopping for virtual goods. But will it be enough?
Admittedly the site has been growing. The average… → Read More
Make no mistake, we get some weird stuff sent to TCHQ, especially when it’s addressed to our Belgian reporter, Robin Wauters. Which is why I always make a point of opening his mail before it’s sent on.
Today, though, was a special day.
Today, wrapped innocently in tissue paper, came “Barbie Video Girl”: a genuine Barbie doll, featuring a hidden webcam in her neck. It’s hard to get across in text… → Read More
The Difference Engine, the styartup programme available to any European startup willing to spend time in England’s North, has extended its application process through to the end of September, giving more teams the opportunity to apply for the second programme, which has been rescheduled to start in January 2011 running through to March 2011. You can contact jonATthedifferenceengine.eu for more… → Read More
The TRON gaming hardware we got exposed to at E3 are headed your way later this year, though you may be disappointed at the price. True TRON fanboys won’t buck at paying $150 for a keyboard and $100 for a mouse, but the average gamer might. → Read More
Fotolia‘s Animoto-like slideshow generation platform, Flixtime, has just announced the launch of its pro version with some spicy new features, including the voiceover capabilities that everybody has been waiting for and image transition editing for full creative control. With a $149 annual pro subscription, users can generate unlimited, full-length HD slideshows for commercial use that are free of… → Read More
The U.S. Department of Energy announced today that it will award up to $122 million to create a Fuels form Sunlight Energy Innovation Hub led by the California Institute of Technology. The Hub’s goal is to develop ways to convert solar energy into chemical fuels and scale the technology for commercial use.
The project is in part inspired by the way plants produce energy, and will use artificial… → Read More
The Antennagate press conference won’t soon be forgotten. Good or bad, it’s now part of Apple’s history and will probably be remembered as the time Steve Jobs side-stepped an issue and instead pointed the finger at everyone else. No matter. College Humor put together a short video of what they think the press conference would have been like if Steve Jobs would have spoken his mind instead of… → Read More
This little glider, called the Micro Air Vehicle, is being developed by MIT as a possible surveillance tool. For such a small craft, though, big batteries are pretty much out of the question. I’m not sure exactly what they’re planning on powering, since it’s a glider, but I’m going to go ahead and defer to MIT on that point. In any case, if it has any power draw, it can’t work for long without big… → Read More
When does the Premiership begin, in a few weeks? (Yes, I realize I could just Wiki that, but that would have deprived me of an opening question.) Word today is that the Barclays Premier League has teamed up with EA to make the games a little more technological. EA will henceforth be known as the Official Technology Partner of the Premier League. Yay, etc. → Read More
When HP snatched up Palm, the webOS community feared the worst. Was webOS doomed to be shelved, with HP tearing Palm apart solely for their patents? Within days, however, HP confirmed that they had no plans to abandon webOS or Palm’s smartphone business — in fact, HP wanted to put webOS onto a bunch of other devices, like printers and tablets. Further proving that webOS isn’t… → Read More
The giveaways continue! Google, Microsoft, now HP — apparently, the cool thing to do is to get your product in the hands of people who may or may not even want it. HP’s Todd Bradley and Jon Rubenstein just gave away Pres to everyone in the audience at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference. I think it’s a great idea, personally. It’s important to Microsoft to do serious… → Read More
Nothing like helping out your fellow man. As you know, copyright infringement, known as “theft” by people looking to spread FUD, is the worst crime a person can commit. I mean, you can be in charge of financial intuitions that rip off people’s money, you can be in charge of an energy company that randomly drills into the planet then feigns ignorance when something goes wrong, but hey… → Read More
You may remember at CES this year we had a chance to meet with MagicJack and see the prototype for their Femtocell technology, which they said would be coming out in the first half of the year. Well they missed their projected launch date, but it’s looking like the Femtocell product may still be coming this year. → Read More
With its Chrome web browser, Google has always been obsessed with speed. And now they’re speeding up another aspect of it: how often stable builds are released. The goal now is to release a new stable version of the browser every six weeks — about twice as fast as they currently do, Google says. In other words, get ready for Chrome 6, 7, 8, and 9 coming soon.
So why is Google doing this? → Read More
Microsoft has just reported its earnings for Q4 2010 (their fiscal calendar is a bit odd). Given Apple’s blockbuster quarter announced on Tuesday, there was a lot of talk that Apple would surpass Microsoft in revenue for the first time in recent history. That hasn’t happened. Instead, Microsoft had its best Q4 ever with $16.04 billion in revenue (Apple had $15.7 billion in revenue last… → Read More
As part of its brand relaunch, London’s Gatwick Airport is going all social media on us by integrating Twitter directly into its customer service strategy.
While not quite as bold as actually installing a giant Twitter wall in the airport itself – that would possibly induce riots – Gatwick’s management are to solicit feedback from travelers via their official Twitter account, including displaying… → Read More
Maybe on one of these other Earth-like planets the iPhone 4 actually works? I kid, I kid. Scientists have recently discovered some 140 Earth-like planets using the Kepler telescope that launched in January, 2009. Even more exciting than that, scientists now estimate that there could be as many as 100 million (!) planets in our galaxy alone—remember that there’s estimated to be 100 billion… → Read More
Android tablets are popping up all around the globe and the latest just popped up for the Indian market. The only thing that makes the Olive Pad stand out from the rest is its voice calling capabilities. We don’t have all the technical deets on what sort of cellular trickery it employs, but the skinny is that it apparently works. The rest is standard fare including Android 2.1, Bluetooth, WiFi, SD… → Read More
Nicely timed a few days before Nokia’s earnings release, the Wall Street Journal on Monday reported that the mobile giant is conducting a search for a new chief executive, citing the company’s trouble in posing much of a challenge to the likes of Apple, RIM and Google with its Android operating system in the high-end smartphone market.
No doubt there’s concern from Nokia shareholders, and I also… → Read More
Gotta admit, I’m not exactly familiar with the board game Monsterpocalypse, but I am familiar with the works of Tim Burton. The man does a fine job (most of the time). Connection? Yes! It looks like his next movie will be a 3D adaptation of of the board game. This time, it will be a 3D movie from the ground up, unlike “Alice in Wonderland” where the 3D effects were added at the last minute. → Read More
Google Voice is great, especially if you’re on a mobile platform that offers a native Voice application (namely Android or BlackBerry). But if you’ve been using the service on a regular basis, you may have run into an odd issue: sometimes when you go to actually call someone there’s a lag, as if the phone isn’t altogether sure what it’s supposed to do when you tap on the ‘Call’ button next to a… → Read More
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