Earlier today, Google formally released Goo.gl, their URL-shortener, to the public. They’re calling it the “stablest, most secure, and fastest URL shortener on the web.” But it also may be the coolest thanks to an easter egg.
As Google’s Matt Cutts’ just tweeted out, if you simply add “.qr” to the end of any goo.gl URL, it will create a QR code. Scanning this with any QR code reader will take you to the URL. → Read More
Our buddies (brothers?) over at Engadget just had a massive pile of info land in their inbox. There’s lots of good news in here for Android fans — but if you were looking forward to the Storm3, you might want to take a deep breath before diving behind the jump. → Read More
Much has been said about Apple’s foray into “social networking” (at least into what they consider that term to entail) with the introduction of Ping, part of the company’s iTunes software.
Some are positive about its chances, saying it is merely the seed of amazing things to come, others much less so.
I concur with the latter group and deem the product to be horse dung, 160 million potential users be damned. → Read More
All this negative attention? Apparently not have a negative impact. EA’s upcoming Medal of Honor now holds the distinction of being the most pre-ordered game in the series’ history. Nice. → Read More
Ha! Haters may say something like, “Looks like zombies are gaming’s new ‘break glass in case of emergency’ gimmick,” but another chance to run around the world of Red Dead Redemption is OK with me. (I wasn’t too keen on the previous multi-player DLCs, if only because I’m not the biggest multi-player gamer. I find a solid single-player mode to be far more compelling.) Anyhow, it’s called Undead Nightmare, and it’s due for release in late October. → Read More
HP has just named their new CEO. No, it’s not Todd Bradley — a popular guess out of the current ranks (and clearly he was thinking about it as well). Instead, HP’s Board went outside and picked Léo Apotheker, the former CEO of SAP.
In February, Apotheker abruptly left SAP after only seven months in the CEO position – well, the sole-CEO position. He had been co-CEO with Henning Kagermann for a couple of years before that. But he had been with SAP for over 20 years. → Read More
Google’s URL shortener just opened up to the public, with a standalone site. Launched last December, Google’s Bit.ly competitor, Goo.gl can now be used for any links on the web. And Google promises that the shortener is the “stablest, most secure, and fastest URL shortener on the web.” → Read More
Talk to an Android developer about their biggest gripes with the platform, and one the the top bullets on the list — probably even higher than the fragmentation issue — is that fact that Android Market has had weak support for international users.
Up until now developers in only nine countries were able to sell paid applications, and many international users haven’t been able to purchase applications either. Today, Google is announcing some big improvements on this front: developers from 29 countries will now be able to sell applications (a boost of 20 countries), and in the next two weeks it’s increasing the number of countries that support purchases from 14 to 32.
In other words, this means a big jump in the number of people who can develop paid apps, and it also means that the potential market size is going to be significantly larger, which is great news for all Android developers. → Read More
According to an SEC filing, DNS service provider OpenDNS has raised more capital, $4.5 million to be specific. We’ve confirmed the additional financing with the company and learned that this was an inside round handled by Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners (they took a stake in the company in July 2009).
Chief executive David Ulevitch (see this SFGate profile for more about the man) tells me there wasn’t really a need for more venture capital – the business has been running profitably for a while now – but that OpenDNS had the chance to be “opportunistic”. → Read More
Acer CEO Scott Lin believes netbooks are not dead and that they’ll see about 40 million units sold in 2010 and a similar number in 2011. He expects the high performance Atom N550 from Intel to increase speed and reduce price to about $300, which is pretty darn cheap. → Read More
Tokyo-based augmented reality startup Tonchidot has raised $12 million in Series B funding from various Japanese companies, including the country’s second biggest telco KDDI, major media conglomerate Recruit, ad agency SPiRE and venture capital firms DCM, Itochu Technology Ventures (ITV), and JAFCO.
Tonchidot closed a $4 million series A funding round led by DCM and with ITV participating back in December 2008. The $16 million raised in two rounds is an impressive chunk of money in Japan’s startup scene. → Read More
How is your Halo: Reach-ing? Racked up a bunch of frags in multi-player yet? I’ve slacked off, and now most of my free gaming time goes toward Fallout and F1 2010. There’s a neat bit of news that may be of interest to some of you. You know how when Halo 3 launched, back in 2007, there was a special edition of Mountain Dew? Well now Pepsi (Mountain Dew’s parent company) and Microsoft have teamed up~! again. → Read More
Either spend € 19,90 on this set from BIS Publishers or make your own. Either way, there probably isn’t a better way to quickly learn different fonts than flash cards. [BIS Publishers via swissmiss] → Read More
True Knowledge, the natural language search company, has announced a milestone today.
In the month of August, its site, where users get answers to questions asked in plain English, surpassed three million unique visitors, 26 times what it was a year ago, apparently. While its database has grown to 300 million facts or 31% in 2010. Many of those facts come from existing structured data, but users can also contribute their own. → Read More
One thing I love about Disqus is their mobile commenting abilities. Traditionally, commenting on mobile devices has been awful, but Disqus makes it pretty on the small screen. That said, it’s still a pain to moderate Disqus comments while on the go. So Disqus has a new product to take care of that.
The commenting start-up (which we use here at TechCrunch) is releasing a set of mobile applications to handle comment moderation when you’re away from your desk. The Android, iPhone, and webOS platforms will all be getting this app. It’s out today for Android, and will be out shortly on the other two platforms, Disqus notes (they’re in review). → Read More
Last week, we asked you if you would trust Panasonic’s new 16-fingered robot that you can see above and that’s supposedly able to wash the hair of a human being. If you were undecided about this question back then, we can help you now with two videos that appeared online just today. → Read More
Sirius XM has a new radio that’s poised to solve all of their problems. It’s called the XM Snap (first discovered, and erroneously thought to be a dock, a few weeks ago), and it marks the first time I’ve seen the XM brand name used in quite some time. SIRIUS xm, in other words. → Read More
eBuddy, the swiss army knife of web and mobile instant messaging services, this morning announced that it has achieved over 100 million downloads of its mobile applications since its 2007 debut, thus stepping in the footsteps of the likes of Facebook, Google (Maps), and Opera (Mini) when it comes to the number of app downloads reached.
In case you’re not familiar with eBuddy, the service basically enables users around the world to chat for free in one, aggregated interface across most major IM networks, including AIM, Facebook Chat, Google Talk, ICQ, MySpace, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. → Read More
I still think Google’s coolest 20 percent project of all time is Liquid Galaxy, you know, the “eight 55-inch LCD screens showing Google Earth in a unified, surround view” thing that Google sets up around to different conferences they are a part of. It’s sort of like the Star Trek Holodeck. It’s awesome.
And now you can build your own — or buy one! Google has open-sourced the entire project, including the Ubuntu sysadmin scripts to the mechanical design of the custom frames. And they’ve released a new version of the public Google Earth that supports it. → Read More
Back when Apple announced that they’d be giving all iPhone 4 owners a free case as penance for the handset’s antenna woes, they also noted that the freebies were only guaranteed until September 30th. A few weeks of evaluation later, Apple announced that the 30th would indeed be the hard stop for the case program. Know what today is? As you may have guessed from the context of this post (or, you know, you look at a calendar from time to time,) it’s the 30th. Everyone loves to procrastinate — but everyone loves free stuff more, I’d guess. → Read More
