People don’t send postcards anymore. Why bother when you can photo MMS a friend? Attempting to restore some of the social experience behind photography. SwingVine has created SwingVine Gallery an app that attempts to bring back some of the mystique and enjoyment of social photo sharing, sort of like a mobile photo game of tag.
Using your iPhone’s camera and GPS, the SwingVine Gallery app allows you to send a photo to a friend “secretly,” which they are unable to see unless they also participate by sending a photo back. → Read More
Amazon’s Kindle has always been an interesting device to me. When I first heard about it in late 2007, I was sure I wouldn’t want one. It was awkward looking and at $399, way too expensive. But when the second iteration came in 2009 with a sleeker look, I decided to buy one to see what all the fuss was about. I quickly learned to love it.
That said, I still didn’t see any real future for such a product. At $359, it was still absurdly expensive. And with all the rumors swirling about Apple’s impending tablet device, it seemed like it was a temporary niche product, at best. But on the eve of the unveiling of the third iteration of the device, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is making things more interesting. → Read More
Local deal goliath Groupon is launching a major new feature today: deal personalization, giving the site the ability to send you the deals it thinks you’ll be most interested in. Before now, Groupon has always offered one or two deals per city per day to its users. That’s still going to be true, but with a twist: the site will be sending different deals to users based on criteria like their gender, buying history, and their interests. The change may sound fairly minor, but it will likely have a big impact on Groupon’s bottom line.
Groupon’s simplicity has no doubt contributed to its success, but this is one case where it has some very good reasons for introducing a few extra options: personalization will help the site fend off the 500 clones that are gunning for it, it will allow Groupon to offer an unlimited number of deals, and the site can now offer deals from businesses located outside of large cities. Local personalization is rolling out to six cities for now (Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle), with the rest on the way. → Read More
We don’t cover driver updates a lot here at CrunchGear because the changelog is usually pretty trivial — small performance gain here, bug fix there. But the latest update to the NVIDIA Optimus drivers (the ones governing hybrid graphics on notebooks) has some features I wish I’d had years ago. The ability to see when your GPU is in use, the load, and what’s causing it are great tools for power users. Visibility of the GPU’s role in the system is important, since power draw and GPU needs are increasing all the time, yet batteries aren’t getting much bigger. [via PC Perspsective] → Read More
Nefarious pirates looking to, um, pirate StarCraft II are running into a bit of a problem: one of the more popular torrents that purports to be the game is actually nothing more than a conduit for a nasty bit of malware. I know $60 for a PC game may seem a little expensive to many of you, but would you rather pay the money (and earn Light Side points) or try to pirate it (and earn Dark Side points) and have to deal with cleaning out your system? → Read More
Security specialist Ron Bowes has once again proven how easy it is to glean valuable user information from Facebook, by spidering Facebook’s online directory and compiling it all into one neat little torrent that could be downloaded off his site, SkullSecurity.com.
Bowes created a torrent containing over 171 million entries with links to profiles that provide access to the names, addresses and phone numbers of 100 million users, one fifth of Facebook. Bowes accessed Facebook’s directory, which has the default dictum “Anyone can opt out of appearing here by changing their Search privacy settings.” Yeah, but should they have to? → Read More
Imaginatik, the developer of an idea management software for enterprises, has released a new version of its offering, Called Idea Central, the software aims to provide a collaborative environment to share, evaluate and curate ideas within an organization.
Idea Central has added an activity monitor to give users a realtime visibility into activity within a network, and event analytics, which helps administrators track and monitor author activity within an idea network. The software also includes additional e-mail configurations, custom workflow alerts, and mobile integration. → Read More
This morning, Reuters published this article. On their site, it seems fairly innocuous, with the title “RIM stock jumps as market eyes revamped BlackBerry” but that wasn’t the original title. And it’s not the one Reuters syndication partners are picking up. That title is “RIM seen unveiling ‘iPhone killer’ next week“. Yep. Here we go again.
If Reuters is to be believed, the BlackBerry 9800 set to be unveiled next Tuesday will destroy the iPhone. I’m not sure how yet. But it just will. Nevermind the fact that it’s at least the tenth or so phone to earn such a moniker — and the iPhone is not only still alive, but thriving — it just will. → Read More
While I applaud the elegant nature of this USB centipede concept, it brings up (as most concepts do) as many questions as it answers. How will power be isolated in one or another device? How much will an integrated USB controller increase the price of each device? What if you need to unplug the one in the middle? And of course, while it’s not nearly as cool of an idea, a good USB hub will do the same job with fewer complications. [via Zizot and LikeCool] → Read More
It seems that all Kindle orders have been frozen and, it seems, that Jeff Bezos is hanging around New York right now and will speak on Charlie Rose tonight. While I seriously doubt that Bezos will whip out the Kindle 3 on the Charlie Rose show (he’ll probably talk about ebooks outselling hardbacks) it seems there is definitely something afoot. → Read More
Here’s the thing. If this were a Ichabod Crane-looking dude with coke bottle glasses and a tucked-in plaid shirt, this collection of processors would be kind of sad. But it’s a Grand Theft Auto-looking Russian dude with a tucked-in designer beater, who can probably cut you just by looking at you. For men like this, we must indulge their eccentric hobbies. [via English Russia and GearFuse] → Read More
Modu isn’t well known in the US, but they make a tiny handset that’s been out for a while. While their current product offering has been criticized for being outdated and clunky, the good news (at least for them) is that they have developed a new Android based handset which should be available in the near future. That handset leaked, and while it’s got some strange things about it (no 3G, have to use wifi for data transfer) this may be because it’s a prototype. The Modu android phone also has a built in FM receiver, but you have to use a head set with it in order to hear the tunes. The leaker sent over some video, you can check it out after the jump. → Read More
Every big publisher on the Web wants to be able to serve up ad-friendly videos, but creating them can be a pain. But there are already plenty of high-quality videos out there in every subject imaginable. With that in mind, Answers.com has quietly launched Video Answers with about 200,000 videos from video distribution network 5min on everything from home repair and fashion tips to cars and travel.
5Min is already one of the largest video networks, with more than 110 million video views a month and 30 million unique visitors across 800 partner sites. But Answers.com will become its biggest partner by far. 5Min syndicates videos from about 1,000 online video producers, including CBS, Hearst, Scripps, and WatchMojo. Anytime one of 5Min’s videos matches a question asked on Answers.com, WikiAnswers, or ReferenceAnswers, video results will show up and they will play on the new Video Answers page. Advertising revenues will be split between Answers.com, 5Min, and the video publisher, with roughly a third going to each. → Read More
Not to alarm you, but we only have 172 years to live, so better ding 80 (soon 85) while you still can. Scientists have spotted an asteroid that, if all goes well (er, bad), will smash right into Planet Earth in the year 2182. → Read More
Short version: The uebo M200 is a fine enthusiast media streamer. It played back every file I tried from either a local or network source, works well with UPnP services like PlayOn, and even has a few built-in Internet services. The interface isn’t Boxee-awesome, but it’s more than enough to get the job done. I like it. → Read More
As every life form in the Milky Way knows, StarCraft II came out yesterday. I’ve heard stories—anecdotes, if you will—about people pulling out of World of Warcraft raids in order to play the game. → Read More
For some time now, Twitter has been working on a new API: the Twitter Streaming API. The idea behind it is to allow third-party Twitter clients to receive continuous tweet updates in realtime. As developer advocate Taylor Singletary notes today on the Twitter Development Talk Google Group, limited testing of this new feature (also called “User Streams”) for desktop clients has now begun.
Currently, TweetDeck and Echofon, two popular Twitter desktop clients, have access to the new API for testing. Singletary notes that not all users of these clients will see this new tech in action at first. Instead, there will be a more gradual roll-out with each app. Once that occurs, Twitter will start opening up the Streaming API to other clients as well. → Read More
This is a little quirk of mobile deal-making I wasn’t aware of. Gadgetwise noticed that on the AT&T Captivate (which I recently reviewed), launching the included MobiTV app while connected to a Wi-Fi network prompts you to disconnect, and then warns you in all caps “THIS PRODUCT WILL USE A LARGE AMOUNT OF DATA AND YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL DATA CHARGES.” Sure, and usually that’s why they ask you to connect to your Wi-Fi: so it doesn’t burden the network and/or use up all your data (at which point you inevitably come crying to them). So why does this one tell you to shut it down? → Read More
We broke the news yesterday on Facebook’s most recent acquisition – social activity service Hot Potato. Like most of Facebook’s acquisitions, this deal looks to be mostly about getting a great team of engineers on board, not about the product.
And like many of these acquisitions, investors in the acquired company don’t stand to make much money. Facebook is paying around $10 million in cash for Hot Potato, we’ve heard from a source with knowledge of the deal. Employees will also be getting stock options which could prove to be very lucrative down the road. But investors aren’t getting any stock in Facebook. → Read More
My dad has been hounding me to get him some gel pens so when I was in Japan two weeks ago I bought him three of them. I should have just hit up Jetpens. This odd little webstore features all sorts of Japanese gel pens along with accessories like notebooks, brush pens, and erasers. Domo arigato, Internet! → Read More
