This is a crazy story right here. In Beijing there is an enormous display called the “Sky Screen” over the downtown shopping district that hangs over shoppers, presumably showing them ads and so on. And earlier this week, a guy walked over, leaned back on a couch that was waiting there, and played ten minutes of a popular MMORPG on the 800-foot-long screen. What does it mean?! → Read More
With iOS 4.2 finally out in the wild, the iPad has effectively been rejuvenated. And there’s no question that Apple is going to sell a massive amount of them during the Holiday shopping season. But what comes next? Well, the iPad 2, of course.
You don’t need to be an analyst looking for inside information to know that Apple has a pretty standard policy of refreshing their product lines about once a year. And with iOS devices, it’s more or less clockwork. Since the iPad was released in early April last year, that’s the most obvious target for when the iPad 2 will hit. But there’s a side question that will go along with that launch: what will happen to the iPad 1? Will it go cheap? Or will it go extinct? → Read More
We heard back in July that Virgin was working on a digital-only magazine, much like the upcoming iPad-only The Daily from News Corp. It was supposed to launch in October, according to the rumors then, but you know how things go, and it looks like the end of November (Tuesday the 30th, to be precise) is the new go time. → Read More
Social news site Gather has raised another $2.4 million in funding this week, in order to pivot its core business and focus on being a content on demand platform for other publishers, like Demand Media. Gather currently allows to writers to submit content and generate ad revenue share based on pageviews and site engagement. → Read More
As any scientist can tell you, there are thousands of scholarly journals out there. Some, like Science and Nature, are broad in scope, covering everything from human genetics to space. Others, like the Journal of Biomedical Nanotechnology, are a bit more specific. Unfortunately, the huge volume of research that gets published can made it tedious to keep track of the articles that are relevant to you. Academia.edu, a social network for researchers and other academics, thinks it has a fix.
Now, journal articles aren’t exactly hard to come by on the web. You can always search Google Scholar for whatever you’re looking for, some universities offer their own search tools, and there are plenty of topic-specific sites that can help you find relevant material. The problem, according to Academia.edu founder Richard Price, is that this content and the communities around them are very fragmented. So Academia.edu built a directory of as many journals as it could find. → Read More
A new federal investigation is focusing on the legality of supply line leaks and their consequences on Wall Street. The poster boy for this would have to be Apple, around which an entire manufacturing and distribution channels has grown, and which is now too big to plug every leak — especially now that memetically propagating news magnifies every murmur into a clamor, for better or for worse.
The subjects of the probe are some research firms that make it their business to know what’s going on in, say, Shenzhen or Taiwan, where friends and industry experts dispense information that may or may not be confidential about such things as big new orders, equipment changes, and meetings with other companies. The feds say that at some point, these things must constitute insider trading. I say good luck drawing that particular line. → Read More
Just a quick note for all of our friends in the UK: that SkyFire application that was such a big deal just a few weeks back for kinda-sorta allowing Flash video playback on the iPhone? You can get it now; 21 days after the slightly bumpy US launch, SkyFire has pushed the browser up for sale on the UK App Store. Just in time for the Doctor Who Christmas Special next month! Hurrah! Thanks to currency conversion, Brits will pay a wee bit more than their US counterparts — but don’t worry, you won’t get gouged too bad: at €2.39, it works out to about $3.15 (versus $2.99 in the US.) It could be worse; you could be an Australian trying to buy games on Steam. → Read More
Here it is, treehuggers and haters. The EPA’s rating of the Chevy Volt: 93 when on electric, 37 combined city/hwy on gasoline, which works out to a 60 MPG composite . Those combine to give the Volt an average range of 379 miles, although, just like with the Leaf, the total range for EV-only topped off slightly less than what the manufacturer advertises. Those keeping score will also note that the Leaf was rated at 99MPGe earlier this week with a total yearly cost of ownership at $561. So yeah, let the arguing continue. → Read More
Upon seeing our last post about announcement invites for the tentatively-titled “Playstation Phone” supposedly going out, a much-trusted tipster just rang us up with the skinny on a recent private event, where they tell us they saw the rumored handset in all of its plasticky-flesh Here’s what they told us: → Read More
We see cool gadgets all the time here at TechCrunch. But not many of them can help paraplegics walk again. This one does.
Berkeley Bionics has created an exoskeleton product called eLegs that literally gets these people up and walking. Arm swings on crutches control the legs and tell them when to walk. Time Magazine calls it one 50 best inventions of 2010, and they are clearly right. Technology like this may eliminate the concept of a wheelchair for millions of people with spinal cord injuries, stroke, MS, etc.. Here’s it in action: → Read More
Nat Goldhaber of Claremont Creek Ventures thinks that 2011 will be the year of the cleantech IPO…finally. So does that mean that America hasn’t totally lost the cleantech race after all?
The most optimistic case is that we’re in a clump of countries leading the pack. The glass-half-empty version: Politics, boneheaded legislation and our lousy capital markets will saddle America’s culture of innovation, giving other surging hot spots a leg up. In the second part of our interview with Goldhaber, we talk about America’s cleantech mojo. → Read More
Snaptu, a Sequoia-backed company that offers a suite of smartphone-like applications that can be installed on more basic handsets, has hit another major milestone: it’s now up to 20 million registered accounts, 5.5 million of which are active. And it’s adding users very quickly — it was only last June that the company announced that it had 10 million registered users, 2.5 million of which were active. In other words, the company has doubled its user base in only five months.
The company isn’t showing any signs of slowing down, either. Snaptu reports that it’s now adding 2.5 million new users a month — more than one a second — and that it’s drawing 3.3 billion monthly page views. Snaptu says that 43% of its users are in Asia (including India), with 26% in North America and the rest split between Europe and South and Central America. → Read More
It was inevitable, developer Jesse Stay has built a way “Like” tweets on the Twitter homepage. The winner of Kynetx’s Facebook App contest, Stay’s browser plugin uses Facebook’s iframe code give you the option to “Like” in addition to “Retweet,”"Favorite,” and “Reply to” Tweets on Chrome, Internet Explorer or Firefox. The buttons show up when you hover over the tweet in your stream. Well if Twitter wasn’t going to do it … → Read More
You should be able to find Gran Turismo 5 in your local store today. That makes today a good day. (It also doesn’t hurt that there’s Champions League today, too.) (Allow me to say the word “today” for the 500th time in four sentences.) Some reviews have popped up online, and I’m going to take 45 seconds to distill some of them for you. Not that it really matters: if you have a PS3 you’ll be getting this game. (Spoiler: it’s generally OK.) → Read More
Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages: THERE’S A STEAM SALE~! → Read More
Well, this is interesting. Google’s Advertising Assistance Program extends to video ads. Earlier today I published an investigative post about Google’s relationship with Publicis and other large ad agencies and incentive programs whereby Google pays the ad agencies to use its advertising platform. That post focussed on the demand-side platforms (DSPs) and trading desks inside the ad agencies which sometimes are powered by Google technology under the covers. Well, it turns out that Google also offers ad agencies incentives to adopt its video and display ads.
A reader who used to work at Google sent us a tip with some text from a PDF that was circulated to Google sales people back in 2009 detailing the “North America Display & Video Incentive Program.” The handout basically lists some sales talking points, including some stats on the disparity between consumer online video viewing and the amount of advertising dollars going to video. Here is the part about the financial incentives: → Read More
Ok TRON fans, have I got a treat for you!
I just returned from a two day TRON press event with some awesome interviews from the creators, cast and crew of TRON: Legacy and the original TRON. I asked many of the questions I solicited from TechCrunch commenters and everyone seemed to love them — especially Jeff Bridges. I mean, maybe they say this to everyone, but his handlers said they had not seen him that animated until our question came along.
Bridges was also pretty excited to talk about the tech involved in the making of TRON: Legacy. He took on the project of making the movie with enthusiasm when he realized he could do much of the acting without cameras by using motion capture. Keep a look out for his interview in part 3&4 along with the super sexy and awesome Olivia Wilde!
2 Videos Ahead. → Read More
A new federal investigation is focusing on the legality of supply line leaks and their consequences on Wall Street. The poster boy for this would have to be Apple, around which an entire manufacturing and distribution channels has grown, and which is now too big to plug every leak — especially now that memetically propagating news magnifies every murmur into a clamor, for better or for worse.
The subjects of the probe are some research firms that make it their business to know what’s going on in, say, Shenzhen or Taiwan, where friends and industry experts dispense information that may or may not be confidential about such things as big new orders, equipment changes, and meetings with other companies. The feds say that at some point, these things must constitute insider trading. I say good luck drawing that particular line. → Read More
As Apple CEO Steve Jobs like to point out, the Android Market is great for users who want to find porn. While that may not be exactly true, other Android-based stores are trying to make it true. And perhaps perception was getting too close to reality, as today, Google has announced that in the next few weeks, they’ll be showing content ratings for all apps listed in the Market.
While Android has previously had a content rating policy, prior to this, these ratings were not surfaced to users. Nor does it seem like they were strictly enforced. As a result, it was difficult to distinguish an app with mature content from those that were meant for kids. Now, all apps in the Market will be required to show one of four content rating levels: All, Pre-teen, Teen, & Mature, Google’s Eric Chu writes today. → Read More
