Shanzai performed some decidedly sober analysis of the tablet market and came away with one simple conclusion: no matter how much LG boasts, no matter how much Samsung leaks, no matter how many Notion Inks ship, the tablet market is sewn up this year. Why? Because no one will have product in pipeline for the holidays and thus the only things selling in the slate form factor will be the Kindle, Nook, and iPad, in that order, and you’ll note that two of those items aren’t tablets. → Read More
Sanyo in Japan today announced [JP] what it says is the world’s first solar-cell-equipped public bus, the Solarve (which stands for Solar Vehicle). The bus was unveiled to commemorate the 100th anniversary of a Japanese transportation and logistics company called Ryobi [JP]. The Solarve is essentially a city bus with solar cells on top that generate power for its interior LED lights. → Read More
Apparently someone is thinking about creating a movie based on Red Dead Redemption, and they want Brad Pitt to play John Marston. Could be neat. → Read More
Like John Henry dying at his hammer, Blockbuster is just about ready to stop being a steel-driving man. According to the LA Times, the company could file for bankruptcy as soon as September in a move, while dire, doesn’t specifically mean the end of the company. → Read More
The busy green tech industry is teeming with companies focused on alternative energy. Some of the biggest new sources of energy they are trying to tap into include solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, biomass and fuel cells. Most companies harnessing each power source are pursuing somewhat similar technologies – such as photovoltaic cells in solar, turbines in wind and hydroelectric – and then innovate from there.
There are also many companies, however, that also focus on green technology and alternative energy but in different ways. Here are five you may not have heard of that are worth keeping an eye on. They are developing new ways to capture and store energy, light up our world, and power our vehicles. → Read More
Editor’s note: The following guest post is by Kim-Mai Cutler.
Nearly four years after Apple launched the iPhone and two years after Google open-sourced the code for its Android operating system, Microsoft is finally set to re-enter the mobile market this holiday season in a serious way with Windows Phone 7.
It is trying to catch up to those more modern smartphones the only way it can — with cold, hard cash.
The company could spend a half-billion dollars or more in marketing costs and payments to developers and handset manufacturers to subsidize the expense of building phones and apps, so that the Windows Phone 7 ecosystem is well-seeded at launch. → Read More
If it’s on twitter, it must be twue. @VZWSupport announced this morning that the long awaited update to Android 2.2 for the Incredible has started rolling out today. Users should see the update hitting their handsets this morning, so you too can enjoy Flash and app storage on your SD card. This of course assumes you didn’t find the leaked ROM yesterday and install it yourself already. [via IntoMobile] → Read More
Some people don’t like ads. But a new class action lawsuit in California against Facebook (embedded below) thinks it should be illegal for teenagers to like any ads without first obtaining parental consent.
We’ve written before about the legal implications of using the likeness of Facebook members in advertising, but this time it is not a joke. And the issue is Facebook’s “Like” button, not using the likeness of a person to plug a product. On Facebook, you can “like” any status update or post in your stream, but you can also “like” ads. When you do so, it can appear as a status update to all your friends if that ad is linked to a Facebook page, thus turning the “like” button into a social endorsement. (If it is not linked to a page, liking an ad is simply used by Facebook to help them determine the quality of an ad, and it will not appear in your stream). → Read More
We’ve shown you quite a few weird robots over the past years, and now we have one more. Meet ZIN [JP], a model developed at Gifu National College of Technology in Japan. I don’t know why exactly they built the robot this way, but it’s funny to look at, especially on video (see below). → Read More
NEC is working on face recognition technology that helps detecting human faces even if they have aged substantially or gained weight over the years. In a benchmark test [PDF] conducted by the US Department of Homeland Security, the technology boasted 92% accuracy from a 1.6 million person criminal database, and 95% accuracy from a 1.8 million person database consisting of visa applicants. → Read More
Location-based game SCVNGR has had a big week of news, first with its partnership with AT&T and then the release of its secret social mechanics playdeck. Today the company has announced that it now sports full integration with the recently launched Facebook Places — you can send your SCVNGR checkins to Facebook, and you can import your checkins on Facebook Places into SCVNGR.
Facebook launched its location API as part of the Places launch earlier this month, but only opened ‘read’ access broadly, which allows developers to import checkins from Facebook Places and use them in their own apps. However, ‘write’ access, which works the other way around and lets developers take checkins from their own applications and syndicate them to Facebook Places, is only available to a select number of partners. → Read More
Mozilla this morning introduced the Alpha release of the next version of its mobile browser Fennec for Android and Nokia N900. Fennec, which serves as the codename for Firefox mobile, comes with add-ons and is also built on the same technology that powers Firefox for the desktop.
An earlier version had surfaced back in April this year.
Fennec Alpha for Android and Nokia N900 comes with Firefox Sync built right into the browser, which means your smartphone browsing experience should closely match the one on your desktop. → Read More
Here we go again. HP just offered $2 billion, or $30 per share in cash for data storage company 3PAR. This morning, Dell announced that 3PAR had accepted its increased offer to acquire the storage leader for $27 per share in cash, or approximately $1.8 billion.
Dell had previously signed an agreement to acquire 3PAR for $18 per share or $1.13 billion, with a provision for matching competing bids. HP then effectively outbid the company and offered $1.6 billion, but Dell matched that offer yesterday, after which HP made a renewed bid for $1.8 billion. → Read More
Here’s something you will not read every time an acquisition deal collapses at the last minute: an account of what happened, and why it did. Let alone why it happened twice over.
Backblaze, an online storage and backup startup based in Palo Alto, this morning published a blog post about not one but two acquisition deals that fell through, ‘breaking down the breakup’. They don’t name names, but other than that it’s a refreshingly open account. → Read More
The bidding war continues.
Dell announced today that 3PAR has accepted its increased offer to acquire the storage leader for $27 per share in cash, or approximately $1.8 billion.
Dell had previously signed an agreement to acquire 3PAR for $18 per share or $1.13 billion, with a provision for matching competing bids.
HP then effectively outbid the company and offered $1.6 billion, but Dell matched that offer yesterday, after which HP made a renewed bid for – you guessed it – $1.8 billion. → Read More
YouTube has launched a fresh Movies category on its website, gathering about 400 full-length films for your on-demand viewing pleasure, all free of charge.
The renewed section, which is actually more like the next step in previously announced projects, comes courtesy of deals the Google company struck with U.S. studios like Lionsgate, MGM and Sony Pictures and UK service Blinkbox. → Read More
Gozer the Gozerian, The Traveller Has Come Mag Gun Is Like A Game Gun Crossed With A Wiimote We’re Living in The Future: Scientists Create Dry Water Rogue Robo-Chopper Flies Into Restricted Airspace Above Washington Quick Look: Mint Floor-Cleaning Robot → Read More
Those of you stuck using boring old stable builds of Google’s Chrome web browser are missing out. Chromium (the open source browser that Chrome is based on) is where it’s at. Sure, it may not be as stable as Chrome, but it has some cool new things that Google is working on.
For example, the latest builds of Chromium (already into version 7) include the new “Apps” area above the “Most visited” area on the new tab page. Here, you’ll find a new placeholder for the Chrome Web Store, which just began initial testing with developers and is due for consumers later this year. Right now, clicking this icon just takes you to the Chrome Extensions Gallery page. But in this Apps area you can also install the apps that Google includes with Chrome, including Gmail, Docs, and Calendar. (Though this is a little tricky to do currently.) → Read More
A few days ago, we noted that Facebook Questions, one of the service’s latest products, had mysteriously vanished. Naturally, this led to questions on rival service Quora about whether or not the service had been killed. Considering that the product wasn’t yet a month old, that seemed silly. Sure enough, it was silly. Facebook Questions has risen from the “dead” and reappeared this evening.
To be clear, the service is still only turned on for a fraction of Facebook’s 500 million users (we’re talking single digit percentages). But as Facebook told us on Monday, they shut it off for some of those users as they ran some tests. Product lead Blake Ross, meanwhile, left us a comment noting that “We change test groups with Facebook Questions all the time. The original test group will regain access to the product tomorrow afternoon.” → Read More
If you’re an EVO 4G owner who loves Froyo as much as you love root access, then you’ve probably been a little cranky this past month, what with your two loves not on speaking terms.
Good news, kiddo, those beautiful, wonderful, resourceful people over at XDA have managed to patch up relations between the two, and now have a guide to show you how to get your Froyo EVO 4G and root access back together again. → Read More
