The European Commission has launched an investigation into Google after two vertical search engines submitted formal complaints that the firm had use its dominant position to crowd out and disappear results from these engines – as reports various outlets including Bloomberg and the BBC.
The EU is obliged to look into whether Google as purposely lowered the search rankings of price comparison sites Foundem (UK) and Ciao (owned by the Microsoft’s Bing), and French legal search engine ejustice.fr in its results.
The EU investigatation will also take in Google’s ad platform, which covers Google’s unpaid and sponsored search results and “an alleged preferential placement of Google’s own services.”
We’re going to take a look at what all this means. → Read More
The thin and light Dell Vostro V130 comes in multiple colors (including red) and weighs in a 3.5 lbs. What’s under the hood? An HDMI port, two USB port, and a Core i3 or i5 ULV processor. I know, right? It supports WiMAX, Bluetooth, and WiFi. → Read More
Well, so much for the G2′s much-knocked anti-tamper system. You know, that one that would reset the hardware to its original state if it detected it had been modified? Yep — it’s toast. Burnt, smoldering toast. → Read More
A mighty impressive 2.5 million Kinects have been sold so far. An even mightier impressive 4.1 Sony Moves have been sold, but that’s been available since September. Translation? People, for whatever reason, are still enthralled with motion control. And here I thought people got their rocks off with Wii Bowling a few years back, but apparently not. → Read More
I really loved my Kindle when I first got it. I love writing books, and I’m for anything that helps people consume and purchase more of them– I don’t care if I make a fraction of the royalties off electronic sales.
I was especially struck by how much I wished I’d had a Kindle in college. As a literature major I read about five books a week, not to mention all the textbook reading for other courses. There were so many great touches in the UI that elevated the experience from just putting a book on a screen. There’s the Kindle store and its friction-free, one-click purchases from anywhere, say, a cafe the night before the exam when you still haven’t bought the book. There’s the freedom from lugging around a heavy backpack of books. And there are so many features that are designed specifically for collegiate reading like the ability to easily highlight, annotate, store those annotations in a specific file, and be able to easily search around within the book and find certain quotes or passages. I thought, this isn’t a beautiful piece of hardware, but it is clearly designed by someone who knows high-volume readers.
So how the hell is it possible that the Kindle doesn’t have a feature as obvious as page numbers? → Read More
Back in August, at a conference in Europe, Google showed a little preview of the Chrome Web Store and noted that a launch would probably take place in October. While there were some hints of it coming along in October (including some pricing details that were apparently turned on by accident), it never came. And since today is the last day of November, I think it’s safe to say it’s not coming this month either. But it now definitely appears that Google is ramping up for an early December launch of the store, perhaps alongside a Chrome 8 release or a Chrome 9 beta release.
Earlier today, there was a flurry of activity in the Chromium Issues list. Specifically, there was a lot of activity surrounding the “ReleaseBlock” labeled items. And if you look them over, you’ll notice that most of these 16 issues are related to the Web Store or Chrome Apps in some way. Google appears to be tying up loose ends to get this product out the door as soon as possible. → Read More
Is there no escape from the Playboy franchise? Jolt Online, the Ireland-based social games publisher that was acquired by GameStop last December, has unveiled its latest Facebook game: Playboy Party.
Described as featuring “pretty much all the things that you can imagine from a Facebook Playboy game” – I haven’t a clue what that means – the accompanying press release assures us that you’ll “find it entertaining”.
“This is our Christmas present to the Internet”, proudly boasts Dylan Collins, Chairman of Jolt Online Gaming. “We almost went blind developing this game but we think that Playboy Party will keep you entertained anywhere you can access your Facebook account”.
Ooh err. → Read More
Unfortunately, I’ve exhausted all of my Clásico references in that Windows Phone 7 post. How much sense would it make to use all of the references all over again? I mean, this time I could link to El País’s match report (“goals rain down in the Camp Nou like leaves in the autumn, in a natural manner, with a just rhythm, with a beautiful and serene shape, a sign of health and footbalistic prosperity”), but that would be gloating. So, seeing as though I can no longer reference the game, I’ll just come out with it: EA Sports will be backing the MLS’s newest team, the Vancouver Whitecaps, in a big, big way. → Read More
MyTweetMag, launched quietly in the summer by Hamburg-based Sebastian Schuermanns, is a paper.li-like service that lets users create a ‘magazine’ based on links and other content pulled in from their Twitter stream.
However, where it differs slightly from paper.li is the degree of manual intervention that is required. Instead of automatically culling links from a user’s tweets and those of the Twitter users they follow, MyTweetMag requires that tweets use a specified hashtag, similar to curated services like stori.fy or curated.by. In addition, each ‘magazine’ follows the tweets of the “editor” and up to 5 co-editors only, although the option to multi-author the resulting ‘MyTweetMag’ is potentially quite powerful without significantly raising the barriers to publishing.
So far, so ‘me too’, perhaps. → Read More
Old Bill’s Effectology series is getting more and more complex. Take this post, for example. It allows you to turn a guitar into a Moog synthesizer using a bunch of EHX pedals. Obviously not everyone can recreate Switched On Bach with a git-fiddle and some boxes, but darn it, isn’t it great that someone somebody tried? → Read More
Back in July, I wrote about a nifty new startup called Standing Cloud that makes it easy to set up hosted installs of dozens of cloud-based applications — like WordPress, Drupal, or Trac — with a single click. Unfortunately, all our commenters seemed to care about was the company’s logo, which consisted of Papyrus font set against a plain white background.
Now Standing Cloud is back with a new, much more attractive logo that should appease all you font critics, and it has some big news in tow: it just closed a $3 million Series B funding round led by Avalon Ventures, with participation from existing investor Foundry Group. This brings Standing Cloud’s total funding to $5 million since it was founded in 2009. → Read More
PlayStation 3 controllers are pretty nice. However, these are just a little bit nicer. For $34.99 Nyko is offering the Raven PS3 controller in standard and alternate configurations with soft-feel grip and a 25-hour battery. The controllers allow you to swap buttons and the “alternate” configuration offers a swap of the left analog stick and the D-pad. → Read More
Verizon’s been pretty open about their plans surround the launch of their 4G LTE network — 38 cities, by the end of this year — but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some lingering fuzzy details. When will the roll out start? Will bandwidth be metered/pay-per-megabyte? Who’s going to explain to all of our grandmothers why the mobile world is using yet another confusing acronym? Tomorrow morning at around 9 AM pacific, Verizon’s going to be holding a press conference where they’ll hopefully be answering all this and more, along with providing final details for the impending launch. We’ll be there (well, as “there” as we can be — it’s a phone-based conference) bright and early, and will report back with anything we hear. → Read More
Virgin’s somewhat highly-anticipated Project iPad magazine went live early this morning. Its focus is on “design, entertainment, technology, entrepreneurs” and its format is kin to other attempts at next-generation magazines, though I’d say this one is more successful.
Of course, it requires an iPad with 4.2 to enjoy, and while five or six million of those have been sold, not everybody will get a chance to check this thing out. So I put together a little video walkthrough for you guys. → Read More
Techcrunch has published thousands of blog posts over its nearly 5 and a half years. Many are good one-day stories, some we’d like to forget, but others are gems. These classics are just as interesting today as when they were first written.
Why Michael is a pirate. The age of process journalism. The best ways you can get blogged. Our first AOL official meeting. Plus, some of the major news we broke.
But try discovering them. It’s nearly impossible. That’s one of the downsides of a reverse chronology blog.
There is a solution. Presenting TechCrunch Classics. A page that will keep an updated list of memorable and favorite posts. → Read More
Shama Largan Ding Dong? Digitimes, whose news we need to take with a grain of salt, is reporting that Largan Precision is making the cameras for the so-called iPad 2. If you read the Digitimes statement, they’re basically saying that Largan Precision is declining to state whether they are making the part or not in a Taiwan Stock Exchange. Largan reportedly makes the 5-megapixel cameras for the iPhone 4. → Read More
Only a few hours after rocking the boat, Wikileaks now finds itself on the business end of a denial of service attack. Access to the site is spotty right now, which would make sense given that the attack is “now exceeding 10 Gigabits a second.” Someone out there is ticked off, but who? → Read More
High-end computer display maker EIZO has announced [JP, PDF] a 3D monitor for the Japanese market today, the DuraVision FDF2301-3D. The LCD is sized at 23 inches, offers full HD resolution and comes with directional backlight. But the major selling point here is that users can view 3D images without glasses. → Read More
After we reported on rumors that Yahoo plans to cut as much as 20 percent of its workforce a few weeks ago, Yahoo called that number “misleading.” But layoffs do seem to be brewing, judging by the increasing number of tips we’ve been getting.
On November 23, one tipster wrote that layoffs would be “officially happening after Thanksgiving but before Xmas 2010.” Then yesterday, we started getting tips that the layoffs would begin today. Some product groups that seem to be targeted for cuts include Flickr and Yahoo Groups. → Read More
Looks like Apple is playing the heel again. It has asked PhotoFast to stop producing its 256MB SSD upgrade kits for the new MacBook Air. Boos can be heard all over the arena Why, Apple, why? Why’d you do it? → Read More
