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
Now that Facebook has entered the space, Google appears to be ready to take it more seriously, and Foursquare is gaining some real traction, the other players in the location field need to start defining their roles. Of the other players, Gowalla has been doing some interesting stuff around check-in aggregation. But their more interesting play may be around travel. And a small change today points to that.
As you can see on place pages for various airports, Gowalla has begun connecting your travels from destination to destination. So if you check it at SFO then five hours later check in at JFK, they know that you were on a cross-country flight and create a new graphic to showcase that, complete with your miles traveled. Below that they tell your friends about your journey. And they’re even able to see if you had a layover at another airport. → Read More
Talk to any large company in Silicon Valley and they’ll be the first to tell you that they foster a culture where innovation is everywhere and engineer imaginations can run wild.
Unfortunately, that’s often just a complete fabrication from the company’s marketing department. But even at companies that really do try to encourage innovation, it’s often tough for engineers to pull themselves away from their workload so that they can tinker on a side project.
That’s an issue that faced YouTube several years ago. No, YouTube doesn’t just pay lip-service to innovation — the company, like its parent Google, allocates a good chunk of time for developers to work on their own projects. But oftentimes engineers simply didn’t take advantage of their 20% time, so YouTube came up with an answer: instead of trying to get its engineers to spend one day a week on side projects, it decided to launch a biannual event where they spend a whole week crafting whatever they can think up.
Earlier this month, YouTube invited me to talk with a few team members about this so-called New Ideas Week and how it got started. They also shared some projects that are currently in the works and got their start during the Week — things like a new version of YouTube built from the ground up for children, and a new Qik-like mobile service for live streaming. → Read More
Big shake-up in the PC industry: Yesterday, the country’s biggest PC maker NEC and Lenovo announced a plan to form a joint venture to create Japan’s largest “PC group”. Lenovo will hold a 51% stake in the joint venture (to be incorporated in the Netherlands), while NEC will own the rest. → Read More
Mail-in rebates are the pits. If you remember to send them in, you’ve gotta pray that Mr. Mailman doesn’t lose it, toss it, or take it back to his You-shrine for worship. Then you’ve gotta wait a few months for it to “get processed”, which is a fancy way to say “sit in a big pile until someone gets around to it”. Eventually (generally long after you’ve forgotten you sent the rebate form back in the first place), you get a random envelope back from a processing company you don’t recognize, and there’s about a 50/50 shot it goes in the trash unopened. It’s an archaic process, often used by retailers banking on the idea that few people will actually bother to send it in or cash the check. According to our buds over at AndroidCentral, Verizon’s tired of’em too. While phones that go for sub-$150 will still be paired with mail-in rebates, they’re ditching the rebate system for anything over that price. The good part: as long as their source is hearing right, the wallet-friendly price cuts will still be there — they’ll just be instant. Lets just hop that last bit’s true — and if it is, that it starts a trend. → Read More
So you got a new MacBook Air. Big deal, right? How have you been using it on your desk? Surely you have an external monitor, trackpad and keyboard. But, somethings missing, isn’t it? Why lie the MBA flat on the desktop, especially since there is now the BookArc from 12 South. → Read More
Show me a handmade device case like this one from Kickstarter, and I’ll show you the money. I love ‘em. The DODOcase is a prime example. High-quality material, a SanFran-based labor force, and honest marketing. Btw, we have a big DODOcase giveaway coming next week for Valentine’s Day. You’re going to love it.
The Rustic Case for iPad and Kindle 3 is from the same thread. This mostly wool sleeve is just that, a sleeve to hold your precious slate. But the handsome look, top-shelf materials and fair price ultimately sells the case. But there’s a catch. They need help. That’s where you and Kickstarter comes in. → Read More
John Carmack, the man behind Doom and Quake, appears to be a bit of a Sony NGP fan. That shouldn’t come as a shock to close followers of id Software, which has very much embraced mobile gaming, particularly of the iPhone variety. Shortly after Sony’s big reveal, he tweeted: “Low level APIs will allow the Sony NGP to perform about a generation beyond smart phones with comparable specs.” Is that enough to make the NGP a great success? → Read More
In Japan, where customers aren’t considered kings but “gods”, the level of friendliness your employees show can make or break your business. That’s why it’s no surprise that it was a Japanese company, Omron, which was the first to develop a high-tech “smile-o-meter” [JP] in 2009 (as previously reported). → Read More
Nokia this morning announced two deals with leading Chinese Internet companies SINA and Tencent, who will be integrating with Nokia’s Ovi Maps in China.
Millions of users of SINA’s microbloging service and Tencent’s massively popular online community QQ (636 million users and counting) will be able to share their location through Nokia mobile devices, check-in to locations and upload content tied to location, such as recommendations and reviews of restaurants, shops and movie theatres. → Read More
