When word got out two weeks ago that Yahoo is not 100% committed to Delicious, people who still use the bookmarking service started to panic and look for alternatives. One competing bookmarking site that some people turned to is Pinboard, a barebones bookmarking site which looks a lot like Delicious did in its early years: lean, no-frills, and very useful. The company saw an influx of traffic and activity. The chart above shows requests per minute to its servers in the three days following the Delicious news compared to the week before.
A couple hour ago, Pinboard Tweeted out a link to the chart: → Read More
Smartphone integration with car-bound OSes is going to be a hot thing next year, and of course Ford’s Sync system is among the major players. Just a week ago they showed off AppLink, which allows a driver to control certain apps (Pandora, a news stream app, and a Twitter app) from the in-car touchscreen. And now you’ve got stuff going the other way: the Sync Destinations app lets you set up a route or destination while waiting for your coffee, then have it load automatically when you get in the car. → Read More
Seriously, how long will it take before we have Robot Jox happening for real? Except in real life the robots will be tele-operated by guys with Kinects. Seriously. This will happen. Watch this video and tell me it won’t. → Read More
Seriously, how long will it take before we have Robot Jox happening for real? Except in real life the robots will be tele-operated by guys with Kinects. Seriously. This will happen. Watch this video and tell me it won’t. → Read More
I’m not making light of this, I’m actually quite upset and disappointed. Another gamer, this one in South Korea, has gone for a marathon 12 hour gaming session, and then collapsed and died. Wake up people! No game is worth playing that long. → Read More
Yesterday we reported that fast growing ecommerce startup Groupon was in the process of raising nearly $1 billion in new venture capital at a $4.75 billion valuation. “The deal should be closed in a few weeks,” we heard from a source.
And in fact the deal hasn’t closed yet – at least, not all of it. But the company has raised a healthy half billion dollars in new venture money at that valuation in the last couple of weeks. Documents signed, checks cashed, the whole nine yards. Now they’re talking to other investors about filling out the round.
So who invested? → Read More
Short version: This new mechanical keyboard from Razer is clicky and attractive, but some layout and design choices irk me, and this thing ain’t cheap. → Read More
Every year, it seems the buzz starts building around now for CES, the giant consumer electronics expo in Las Vegas. And every year at CES, much of the buzz seems to be around the one company that isn’t there — perhaps the most important consumer electronics company these days: Apple.
And this year will be no different. Except that this year, the CES buzz-kill may be more intensified as there are not one, but two key Apple products expected to be announced shortly after the expo: the iPad 2 and the Verizon iPhone. → Read More
Check out the new Extra Normal Grande watch from KLOKKERENT. This one ain’t just for the ladies. It looks like a minimal watch, but if you notice closely, there is a spinning disk atop a numbered face that tells the hour. Water resistent up to 100ft with a Japanese Miyota movement. → Read More
Google, as you may have heard, is making a big push into local advertising. It is currently offering $100 million in AdWords credits to new small businesses that sign up and promotes Google Places results for all local searches. Quite frankly, this is scaring the shit out of competitors like Citysearch, Yellowbook, SuperPages, WhitePages, and Yelp. They all rely on Google search results for people to find a good portion of their listings, and if Google displaces them collectively for local business listings, their businesses will be destroyed.
In local, Google is already a big snowball getting bigger and bigger. So how do they fight back? They enter into an anti-Google alliance, of course. The company organizing this alliance is Yext, a New York City startup which specializes in pay-per-call advertising for local businesses and dashboards to help them manage their reputations and listings online. On Monday, it will launch a new feature called “Tags” which will let small businesses highlight their names with a little tag and customizable message across about a dozen local listings sites. Launch parters for this “Tag Alliance” (I like my name better) will include MapQuest, Citysearch, Yellowbook, Local.com, SuperPages, White Pages, MerchantCircle, and Topix, with more to come. → Read More
That your musical “sound” depends more on your hands/skill than the gear you play is a philosophy with which I personally agree. Too many times have I seen a very talented musician make a piece-of-junk guitar sound incredible while a mediocre guitarist (like myself) will make a beautiful, expensive guitar sound mediocre. One guy I know, a Mr. Charlie Pate of Nashville TN, has an interesting strategy for acquiring some of his guitars; he buys cheap, used Ibanez semi-hollow bodies for $200 or less and then spends the rest of his dough on custom pickups, to get a sound he likes. It works for him, but then again, this guy could play a cardboard Ukulele with one string and you’d think it was an old growth Gulse. → Read More
Online holiday spending continues to set records. comScore is reporting that retail e-commerce spending in the U.S. for the first 56 days of the November to December 2010 holiday season has reached a record $30.81 billion, which is an 13 percent increase versus the same period last year. The past week before Christmas saw $2.45 billion in spending, an increase of 17 percent versus the corresponding week last year. As expected, comScore reports that the massive snow storm that hit the Northeast region of the U.S. over the weekend helped push post-Christmas spending to record levels.
The company also reports that in terms of specific products, Computer Hardware ranked as the top growing category for the holiday season with a 23 percent increase versus last year. Interestingly, handheld devices (such as iPads and e-readers) and laptop computers have driven much of the growth in this sector. → Read More
Drag2Up is Google Chrome and Firefox extension that allows you drag and drop image and other files into any website input box. The extension streamlines the file uploading process by uploading your file in the background and then adding a URL link to the input box of your choice. This saves a boatload of time says the extension’s creator, a 15-year-old developer who goes by the name Antimatter15.
Drag2Up also supports multiple files and has support for a multitude of URL shorteners. Depending on the type of file and whether you’re using Chrome or Firefox, files can be uploaded to hosting services Dropbox, Cloudapp, imgur, Imm.io, Imageshack, Flickr, Picasa, Github Gist, Pastebin.com, Mysticpaste, Chemical servers, Dafk and Hotfile. → Read More
The Hex Watch Band didn’t make it into our iPod Nano watch round up but by gum it should have been there, especially considering this truly magical example of videography provided by the company itself.
Check it out after the jump. → Read More
Here’s a simple little giveaway that might perk your day up a bit. Bing is giving away half a million songs, one each to whoever puts an email address in their little box. Of course, they’re also giving away their newsletter. What, you thought it was going to be easy? Head on over to Bing and follow the instructions to get your free song. Interestingly, the songs aren’t from Microsoft’s own Zune service but from Amazon. Whatever, guys! Whatever. → Read More
Facebook holds a trove of information about its hundreds of millions of users, and many of them are more than happy to hand over some of that data — like a list of their personal interests — so that they can connect with their favorite companies or play a new game. Thing is, despite the targeting opportunities afforded by this data, many businesses have still failed to take advantage of it. TextualAds is a firm that’s changing that for text messaging campaigns, by allowing businesses and large brands to push highly targeted SMS messages to their customers.
The service launched in September, and today it’s announcing that it’s closed a $650K seed round. The round’s investors include Dave McClure (500 Startups), Peter Boboff & Chris Redlitz (Transmedia Capital), Marcus Segal (Zynga), Shawn Simpson (former Googler), and Erik Moore. → Read More
According to Hitwise data released today, Facebook.com was the top visited website in the US in 2010, taking up 8.93 % of site visits between January and November 2010. Google.com came in second at 7.19%, Yahoo Mail is third with 3.52% and Yahoo.com is fourth at 3.30%. YouTube came in fifth at 2.65 %.
While this is the first time Facebook has been named most visited site of the year (crowding out last year’s winner Google), the visits to Google properties combined still cover 9.85% of all site visits, making Google still a formidable opponent. “Facebook” also ranked #1 for most searched term of the year directly in front of the hilarious “Facebook login” at #2. → Read More
Google is going after local businesses in a big way. It is promoting Google Places any time someone does a local search, it tried to buy Groupon for $6 billion, and it put star exec Marissa Mayer in charge of local products. Since the middle of December, it’s been running a $100 million marketing promotion aimed at small and medium-sized businesses to try to get them to sign up for AdWords.
Small businesses that sign up by December 31 have until mid-February to spend $100 on AdWords, after which they will be given another $100 credit. The promotion is good for “the first one million businesses only.” If one million businesses sign up and spend that $100 the total value of the campaign will be $100 million. Of course, the campaign won’t really cost Google anything. It is spending $100 to acquire these small local business as new customers. It has offered similar promotions in the past. But Google’s efforts go beyond offering these credits. → Read More
What’s the best streaming music service around? My guess would be Spotify, but the only catch is that it’s not available here in the U.S. (unless you’re willing to use a European VPN). In fact, the service is so well-like, so influential that “to spotify” has now become a fully recognized word in Sweden [Swedish, obv], Spotify’s home base. → Read More
It’s a good time to be looking for “the little camera that could.” If you’re willing to spend $300-$500, there are some really compelling options out there. The Panasonic LX series is great, and for a little more you can pick up the excellent Nikon P7000. Now Olympus has a new entry to this particular arena, the XZ-1, and although the price and specs aren’t published yet, I can see from here that it’s got a sweet little lens. → Read More
