Yesterday afternoon, an LG Optimus 2X finished the last leg of its rigorous journey from a South Korean factory to my front porch in California. As the first Android smartphone (and the first smartphone of any platform, really) to make it into the wild with a dual-core Tegra 2 processor, it is — for the time being at least — the most powerful Android phone in the world. We’ll have our full review up in just a few days, but in the mean time I figured you guys might enjoy this footage I shot earlier this morning comparing the 1080p video recording of the LG Optimus 2X to that of the iPhone 4. Check it out after the jump. → Read More
Here’s more evidence that regular people have zero time for things like Google TV, Boxee, and Roku, if only because they’re too complicated for their own good. Hill Holiday, a “caffeine-fueled ad agency,” asked five Boston-area families to participate in a cord-cutting experiment. For one week each family was asked to forgo traditional cable TV in favor of one of the following devices: Apple TV, Google TV, Boxee Box, Xbox 360, and Roku. These devices, of course, are the premier devices for people looking to break free of their cable company while still being able to enjoy television. And how did it turn out for these five families? → Read More
I love asking companies if the timing of events is on purpose or purely coincidental. Not only do they almost always say that it’s purely coincidental, but they often try to claim that didn’t even realize a rival was also doing something when they made their plans. Sure.
Next week will feature another such situation. Earlier this week, News Corp. and Apple sent out press invites for an event to unveil the new iPad-only app, The Daily. And then this evening, we’ve just received an invite to a Google event to show off the latest version of Android, Honeycomb. The one meant for tablets. And guess what? They’re on the same day. → Read More
For decades, my mother and grandmother have both religiously scanned the weekly coupon books and circulars that arrive in the weekend newspaper. While clipping coupons can be tedious, grocery stores’ weekly deals can often take out a significant chunk of change of the weekly food bill. Of course, as print couponing becomes obsolete, many consumers are looking to the web for deals at their local grocery stores. Today, Y Combinator-backed AnyLeaf is launching its intelligent grocery deal aggregator to the public.
AnyLeaf scours local grocery store sites in the San Francisco Bay area and aggregates all the deals from these stores, including CVS, Lucky, Nob Hill, Raley’s, Safeway, Target, and Walgreens. You simply enter your zipcode and email address, and AnyLeaf will send you a weekly email with deals from the local grocery stores near you. → Read More
Sometimes, all it takes is a little spark to set off a major forest fire. That is what seems to have happened with my New Year’s Day post on Why We Desperately Need a New (and Better) Google. Over the last two months, there has been an avalanche of articles echoing my post, including New York Magazine, Business Insider, GigaOm, TechCrunch, CNN, and The Wall Street Journal.
I had a feeling that this would get Google’s attention. And I had the same concern as when I challenged the Russian government, once, in a Bloomberg BusinessWeek article about Skolkovo (a new tech park). I feared that Google would either blacklist me or do its equivalent of putting me in a Gulag—deliver even more spam when I search websites. → Read More
Meetup, a long time go-to place to create local online groups, has undergone a major re-launch in the past day. However, it may have missed a trick: not consulting the meetup organizers who pay through the nose for the service. There now appears to be something of a revolt going on amongst some organisers, who are vociferously protesting about the changes.
The reaction of annoyed organisers and members has turned into two, count-em, Twitter hashtags: #newmeetup and #meetuporganizersunite.
Alternatives to Meetup like BigTent are being touted, as is GroupSpaces – a startup which last year raised $1.3 million from the likes of Index Ventures and Angels like Dave McClure and Chris Sacca. It is is already gunning for “FormerMeetupOrganizers” with its own group and a blog post on the subject. → Read More
This week’s Ask a VC has a different twist, since we had a different kind of VC on the show, John O’Farrell Andressen Horowitz’s guru on business development and deal-making.
The questions you asked O’Farrell are below. As usual, feel free to watch the whole show or use the links to skip ahead to your question.
“Have you ever invested in a single employee startup? Would this be a situation in which you guys would make a deal?” → Read More
About an hour ago, Ina Fried over at Mobilized posted that Google would be hosting an event next week to show off the latest version of Android, codenamed “Honeycomb” a bit more. Sure enough, an invite has just landed in our inbox.
The invite reads: → Read More
We procalimed the Motorla Atrix 4G as CES 2011′s Best Of Show. The whole ecosystem from the powerful smartphone to the docking units are really, dare I say, innovative. This official Motorola ad spot shows why. → Read More
I went through an anime phase in college, discovering all the cool stuff from the 80s and 90s that I’d missed, and among the few I remember fondly is Neon Genesis Evangelion. Its legacy continues in new re-imaginings, toy lines, and now, hotel rooms. Are you one of these guys who can’t get enough of the passive, blue-haired Rei? Well now you can sleep in an entry plug and be woken by her charmingly reluctant voice. → Read More
Good news for you, this cold Friday afternoon. Crytek now says that there will, indeed, be multi-player demo for the PC version of Crysis 2. Huzzah! → Read More
Probably sick of countless press emails asking for an official stance on the countless controversial hyper-mediated events like WikiLeaks and the Tunisan and Egyptian uprisings now being amplified through Twitter, co-founder Biz Stone and Twitter General Council Alexander Macgillivray have co-written the polemic “The Tweets Must Flow” essentially arguing that freedom of expression is a human right. → Read More
A Santa Cruz-based electric motorcycle manufacturer, Zero Motorcycles, raised another $2.4 million in private equity, according to a new SEC filing.
Earlier this month, California’s Scotts Valley Police Department started using the company’s Zero DS bikes in urban patrols. According to a company press statement, its Zero DS has a range of up to 50 miles (80 km) and is highway legal, safe for off-road bike paths, and drives quietly due to its all-electric drivetrain, making it potentially advantageous for urban law enforcement.
In late 2010, Zero Motorcycles expanded sales of its all-electric bikes to Australia. The company is selling its products in 32 countries today, including… → Read More
By now you surely must know that Sony has released PS3 firmware 3.56, which applies a “minor security patch” to the system. Of course it does, and of course it prevents people from hacking their PS3. What happens hereafter will be most telling. → Read More
Nothing says selling out your brand than a Potato Head modeled after your star characters. I say that but I’ll still buy one of the TOS-themed toys “for my son” next Christmas. $30 and coming in August. [Star Trek via io9] → Read More
This is sure to cause a backlash among Indian online merchants. Due to restrictions from the Reserve Bank of India, PayPal has amended its user agreement for Indian merchants, imposing a number of restrictions on merchants using PayPal as an online payments mechanism. Now Indian merchants will not be able to accept payments via PayPal that are above $500 per transaction. As stated in PayPal’s blog post announcing the change, “For purchases or payments above this transaction value, you will have to use an alternative payment method.”
The fact that Indian merchants won’t be able to receive payments above $500 per transaction is a big blow to entrepreneurs in the country. As one anonymous developer tells us, “we’re fucked.” → Read More
Galvanized by the unprecedented Internet shutdown in Egypt, angel investor Shervin Pishevar has launched OPENMESH a forum for people who want to discuss ways of preventing governments from blocking communications networks. The site (which is admittedly sparse at the moment) was up within hours of Pishevar tweeting out his ideas, designed and built by followers @Laksman and @garyjaybrooks. → Read More
Tumblr is growing like a weed, but “the last four or five months totally overshadow everything that came before it,” founder David Karp tells Chris Dixon in a taping today for TCTV (watch the video above). “We are growing by a quarter billion impressions every week,” he revealed. Last week Tumblr did 1.2 billion impressions, or pageviews, and it is adding 250 million every week. Just think about that for a second. Over the last 30 days, that came to 4.2 billion pageviews.
If you are wondering why Tumblr’s been having so much downtime lately, just take a look at the comScore chart below, which shows its own estimate of 2.5 billion pageviews for the month of December, up from 335 million from the year before. All of that is coming from 19 million unique visitors per month globally, according to comScore. (Karp’s numbers are based on his own internal Google Analytics and they are for a slightly different time period). → Read More
The new Formula One season begins in March, andFerrari is the first team to show its hand. Its new car, the F150 (so named to commemorate 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy), was launched just a few hours ago at its headquarters in Maranello—Italy, of course. Given that Formula One is poised to introduce a new series of regulations in the coming years, partly to make the sport more “green,” it’s probably worth a few minutes to check out some of the changes Ferrari has made to its flagship piece of engineering. Is it enough to dethrone Adrian Newey and the rest of Red Bull Racing? Prediction: no. → Read More
The Nexus S is a pretty wonderful phone, in most regards. Built by Samsung after months of finetuning the process with their Galaxy S line, it’s a stunning piece of hardware in person — amongst Samsung’s best, perhaps. More importantly, it’s one of the few high-end handsets that gives a pure, unadulterated Android experience as Google sees fit. Alas, it has its flaws. Namely, it seems to reset whenever the hell it wants to. Amidst much clamoring and bickering around the Internets, Google has stayed mostly mum on the issue. Until now. Google’s go-to community rep, Ry Guy, weighed in on the matter: → Read More
