It’s beginning to look like Apple may have had a very, very merry Christmas. Not that it should surprise anyone given how many of their products were on year-end “best-of” lists. But some data that has started to come in over the past few days points to Apple’s Christmas surge once again being led by the mainstays: the iPhone and iPod touch (and probably the iPad as well).
Since yesterday, developers have been tweeting and messaging about huge spikes in downloads of their apps on Christmas. How huge? Just look at the chart in this post. We’re talking two to three times normal numbers. That particular graph came thanks to data from MixPanel, a Y Combinator startup that specializes in iOS analytics. We’ve since confirmed with the company that on the apps they track, they’re seeing the same “2-3x in app download/sales across the board.” → Read More
Seattle startup, EnergySavvy, closed a $1.1 million series-a investment according to the company’s founder and chief executive Aaron Goldfeder. EnergySavvy’s site and service motivates homeowners to reduce their power consumption through retrofit-variety improvements.
NorthWest Energy Angels led the round, joined by several investors in the Pacific Northwest, including Geoff Entress, Andy Liu, and aQuantive alumni Mike Galgon and Karl Siebrecht (the latter two are on EnergySavvy’s board). → Read More
It’s bare bones Monday, amigos. Most normal people have taken this week off, and snow has crippled the entire north-east of the U.S. It’s chaos! So let’s transition to an Apple story. Jobs’ mighty company has recently filed for a patent for a device that would display images holographically and without the need for glasses. This could be good, or it could be just one of the 8 zillion patents big companies like Apple file for all the time. → Read More
Although I would rather die in a pit, bitten by rats and my flesh taken by necrosis than eat at Hardee’s or Carl’s Jr, you have to admit that they do have a compelling social media marketing plan. CKE Restaurants, owners of Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s and famous for making food that is less popular than McDonalds, have created a location-based “coupon game” that allows you to spin a wheel to win valuable food prizes and potentially life-saving antibiotics for after the meal. Here’s what Brad Haley, marketing head of CKE, has to say: “In a nutshell, what we’re doing is dragging the antiquated punch-card type of loyalty programs into the 21st century,” said Brad Haley, executive vice president of marketing for Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s. “We are not only offering a GPS-driven check-in app to keep track of customer visits digitally, but we are offering guaranteed rewards, a restaurant locator, a social media interface, streaming videos, menus, nutritional information and more.” Considering the closest Burger King ever got to a digital plan was Subservient Chicken, this is pretty heady stuff for the fast food industry. → Read More
Like many people, I’ve been holding out for the iPhone to arrive on Verizon before upgrading. It’s been a long wait, and now that my wife has an iPhone 4 she got for Christmas (on AT&T), my iPhone 3GS is really starting to look dated. Fortunately, it looks like Apple’s component suppliers in Taiwan are gearing up to ship 5 million to 6 million CDMA iPhones to Verizon in the first quarter, according to DigitTimes.
Verizon has a CDMA mobile network, as opposed to AT&T’s GSM-based network. So if you know the components, you know which networks the phones will work on. We first reported last August that Apple was developing a CDMA iPhone set for a January ship-date. The DigiTimes report is the latest piece of evidence that this will indeed happen. → Read More
In August, we reported that NTT Docomo, Japan’s biggest mobile carrier, is ready to invest a whopping $3.4 billion through 2012 in an LTE service the company has named “Xi” (which is read Crossy). And over the weekend (and as announced previously), the company finally rolled out said service [press release in English]. → Read More
While the economic climate in the United States remains uncertain, economists and pundits alike continue to define our recent fiscal crisis with words like recession, downturn and depression. But labeling America’s current financial woes should not be the focus for Americans as the overall economy struggles to free itself from its malaise. What really matters is how the current circumstances affect you and what they mean to your future.
In his book, The Great Reset, Richard Florida calls periods like the one currently facing the United States “Great Resets.” There have been two such periods before the current one, and both of these earlier downturns changed our culture in profound ways.
We all know the stories of mass unemployment and hardships suffered by American citizens during the Great Depression. But what often becomes lost in these stories is that a reset plays out as a process and not as much as an event. It represents a shift in values, economic tastes and preferences, business structures, and industries. In fact, it is a fundamental change in our culture as a whole. I like to think of it as cleaning out a closet — the world rids itself of old, outdated principles to make way for the new. → Read More
As we reported multiple times over the past months, the iPhone is a hit in Japan. When compared to other Japanese phones, however, it lacks a few key features such as digital TV tuners or an e-wallet function. Provider SoftBank introduced a hardware solution for the former problem in 2008, and now there’s one for the latter, too. → Read More
Recently I was flipping through GQ magazine’s annual “Style Guide.” A special issue of their magazine dedicated to helping helpless male souls “dress better” (not that the advice is all bad, but it is extremely declarative and one-dimensional – though I do realize that assertive, aggressively consultative content does sell copies). Thankfully the issue had a section on watches, but as it turned out the section was written by fashion editors. Oh oh!. Actually, not everything they said was bad, though it left little room for ‘argument.’ They more or less offered a “one-size-fits-all” approach to recommending watches – which is clearly not in tune with the universe of timepiece options out there. When it came down to it they suggested getting your self a small, thin, gold watch. → Read More
By now many of you may have heard about the massive blizzard that is hitting the Northeast region of the United States over the next few days, bringing as much as two feet of snow to some areas. This, of course, is bad news for brick and mortar retailers, who have been advertising after-Christmas sales for some time now. The post-holiday shopping period has become as popular for massive discounts and sales for both online retailers and in-stores, similar to the period after Thanksgiving. The NPD Group’s retail analyst Marshal Cohen said today that it will take two to three weeks longer for retailers to recover from the loss of sales thanks to the snowstorm. He adds that with next weekend marking New Year’s day, more consumers are likely to be distracted from in-store shopping, also possibly causing a loss in sales.
The silver lining to all of this is that online retailers could see a significant boost in sales thanks to the snowstorm. Home-bound consumers who are still looking for post-holiday deals can access them on retailers online sites or on e-commerce platforms like Amazon or eBay. → Read More
TorrentFreak has released the BitTorrent Zeitgeist 2010, a list of the 100 most searched-for phrases and keywords in 2010 on one of the most popular public BitTorrent indexes, KickassTorrents.com.
Movies are super popular of course, with “Inception“ topping the overall ranking. Also in the top 10: “Iron Man 2″, “Avatar”, “Despicable Me” and “Clash of the Titans”. According to TorrentFreak, “Avatar” was also the most-pirated movie in 2010.
And evidently also in the top 10 of the BitTorrent Zeitgeist 2010: searches for “xxx” and “porn“. → Read More
Amazon this morning announced that on its peak day for this year, November 29, customers ordered more than 13.7 million items worldwide across all product categories, which translates to a – self-proclaimed – record-breaking 158 items per second.
November 29 was, of course, Cyber Monday in the United States, the Monday immediately following Black Friday. → Read More
This isn’t a big surprise. Amazon has just released a statement reporting that the new, third-generation Kindle has now surpassed ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ as the best-selling product in Amazon’s history. Of course, Amazon doesn’t reveal the total number of Kindles sold (Bloomberg recently reported that 8 million Kindles will be sold this year compared to 2.4 million units sold in 2009).
On Christmas Day, Amazon says that more people turned on new Kindles for the first time, downloaded more Kindle Buy Once, Read Everywhere apps, and purchased more Kindle books than on any other day in history. And Amazon’s worldwide fulfillment network shipped over 9 million units across all product categories. → Read More
Usually, one way to determine how sophisticated robots are is to look at how they deal with obstacles standing in their way. Some are able to avoid them, some simply jump over them. But Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology has developed a humanoid that can make use of obstacles. → Read More
IncrediMail, an Israel-based, NASDAQ-listed company that develops email clients and desktop software, has inked a new 2-year agreement with Google, which will go into effect January 1, 2011. This is good news for the software company – the partnership between the two firms is quite crucial for IncrediMail’s bottom line.
The relationship between Incredimail and Google has always been a little rocky, to say the least. Three years ago, Google terminated its AdSense partnership with the company, sending IncrediMail’s shares down more than 45 percent. → Read More
So, What Did You Get? Fly Or Die: The Nexus S, Barbie Video Girl, And AR.Drone (TCTV) Dutch Art Project Helps Prepare For Zombie Attack “The Raider”: British Combat Vehicle Design Based On Batmobile Yeah, So This Exists: A Coffee Cozy Wallet → Read More
Poor Skype. A mere day after its key consumer service suffered a major outage, affecting tens of millions of users for hours on end, a patent infringement lawsuit against the company was filed in the United States. Plaintiff is the obscure Gradient Enterprises, a non-practicing entity (also lovingly known as an “obnoxious patent troll” in some parts).
The patent-in-suit is U.S. patent no. 7,669,207, entitled “METHOD FOR DETECTING, REPORTING AND RESPONDING TO NETWORK NODE-LEVEL EVENTS AND A SYSTEM THEREOF”. → Read More
Like many of you, I am visiting family this holiday season and nowhere does gadget snobbery become more apparent than during gatherings with loved ones. Aside from the ubiquitous “Whose phone is faster?” question, which in my case led to an email race at Christmas dinner, there is endless potential for the marginally tech savvy to show off during the holidays.
But all the superiority gleaned from being able to load non-iTunes purchases into your mom’s iPod is tossed out the window when faced with a relative’s overly complex coffee machine, an arbitrarily complicated alarm clock and two separate indecipherable TV remotes for one TV. → Read More
The top headlines today got me thinking back to 2008. Back then, I was writing for VentureBeat, and we used to talk quite a bit internally about iPhone versus Android. Yes, even back then it was a hot debate. And yes, back then, I was obviously in the iPhone camp. And this annoyed those who saw the promise of Android. “But Android will eventually become much larger than the iPhone,” was the basic argument used against me. But it wasn’t really against me. Even back then, I would openly acknowledge that Android would eventually far surpass the iPhone in terms of units shipped. I mean, how could it not?
And so Fortune’s headline today that “2011 will be the year Android explodes“, has been a long time coming. In his article, Seth Weintraub brings up a number of excellent points about how exactly Android is poised to grow even faster in 2011 than it already did in 2010. Though I suspect a number of his points paint too rosy a picture in terms of the outcome of such downward pressures on costs. I find it very hard to believe, for example, that the carriers (in the U.S., in particular) won’t find a way to screw us in 2011. It’s an artform they’ve perfected over the past two decades. But on paper, at least, it all sounds great. → Read More
Those wacky Aussies! Apparently the heat has gotten to “Koolguitar” because he (or she, to be fair) has decided to sell a 1976 Gibson Les Paul Custom, which it super rare. I’m not so sure about the guitar (however it is up to $5,400 at the time of this post), but the first picture he’s using to post is certainly rare. Since it’s kinda NSFW, I’ll put it up after the jump. → Read More
