A trusted tipster has informed 4/3 Rumors that Olympus is planning on dropping a few new cameras come March 2nd. There’s no more information than that, but what’s this? Forum Olympus France has discovered some recent Oly patents for a couple big-zoom compacts. They’re not interchangeable lens models, more in the luxury point-and-shoot zone, but still could be worth your consideration. We’ll keep our eyes open come March and give you the news as soon as we hear it. → Read More
I’ve only seen bad reviews of this MindJack game, and Zero Punctuation’s take on it is even more savage than usual. It blows my mind that two or three guys can get together and put out something amazing like Braid or World of Goo, yet a couple dozen people manage to take far more money and time and barf out something like this. → Read More
Did anyone else see this coming so soon? We were under the impression that Apple and The Daily were in some sort of partnership, especially since The Daily was excluded from Apple’s new subscription service. Ostensibly, someone at AllThingDhas been tipped off that The Daily will be coming to Android this spring → Read More
It’s amazing what some people can cook up in their spare time. For some, it’s the great American novel. For others, it’s meth. For yet others it’s a full-size sit-in force feedback machine that’s designed around playing your trippy indie racing/shooter/puzzle game. → Read More
The Japanese Arcade Experience from Strata Studios on Vimeo.
Here’s a success story of the crowdsourced variety. 100 Yen, a documentary project looking at arcade culture in Japan, has garnered all the cash it needs (via IndieGogo) to finish shooting, edit, and distribute their film, and it should get a release this fall. I don’t think you’ll be seeing it at your local multiplex, but I bet your local indie flick joint would host a showing if you can sell a few tickets.
Head inside to take a look at the trailer. → Read More
Excuses have been made, and delays explained away, but it seems that AT&T’s variant of the Galaxy S will be getting Froyo tomorrow. AT&T updated their Facebook page, saying that instructions will be posted tomorrow to Facebook. There are final builds floating around right now, but I think after waiting all these months, you poor guys can wait one more day. [via TalkAndroid and Ubergizmo] → Read More
Disney has just acquired Togetherville, a social network for kids 10 years of age or younger, we’ve confirmed with the company. Terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed at the moment.
Togetherville, which exited beta last year, mimics the experience of adult social networking sites, i.e. Facebook but in an age-appropriate and parent-monitored environment. Togetherville promises a safer, more secure environment, where parents can moderate who their children are connecting with. Parents approve each of their child’s friends, and can also connect with other parents using Facebook’s social graph. → Read More
Dailymotion, the French-born video site and YouTube competitor, has quietly launched a public Application Programming Interface (API) for third-party apps that want to integrate some, if not all, of its features.
Available as an SDK for JavaScript, PHP and Objective C (iPhone, iPad and Mac), with ActionScript (Flash) and Python also under development, Dailymotion’s initial API offering, however, appears to be a work-in-progress. The company says that it will “eventually” support the full gamut of Dailymotion’s core functionality, including video upload, playlists, channels etc. offering the ability to integrate “Dailymotion modules” into any site or application, such as on iPhone, iPad, Android, Bada, and Windows Phone. → Read More
Exclusive - Grey Area, a small Finnish smartphone games developer, has raised $2.5 million in Series A funding from Index Ventures, London Venture Partners and Initial Capital, TechCrunch has learned.
The startup is behind a mobile alternative reality game called Shadow Cities, which is a pretty fascinating location-based MMORPG that essentially turns the place you live into a full-fledged game scene. → Read More
Twelve South makes cool, if simple, laptop gear. We’ve covered their BookArc before and this is an improved permutation of the version for the latest MacBook Air. It costs $39.99 and allows you to stand your laptop up next to a monitor and control the cabling so everything is in its right place. → Read More
Search and online advertising juggernaut Google announced a couple of months ago that it would be providing some $5 million in grants to non-profit organizations devoted to innovating journalism.
Around 40% of the total fund was recently allocated to the Knight Foundation in the United States.
It appears more than 50% of the fund has just been awarded to the International Press Institute, based in Vienna, which will be used to sponsor the IPI News Innovation Contest. → Read More
We’re now just over two weeks away from this year’s SXSW event in Austin, Texas. And just as is the case every year, there will be several startups jockeying to be the one that is the breakout hit. But one of those previous breakout hits, Foursquare, isn’t standing still either.
In a ridiculously awesome blog post on the matter today, Foursquare hints at their plan for the event this year. Here’s the entire post entitled “OMFG!”: → Read More
This isn’t big news to anyone but PS3 hackers, but I wanted to include it just as a “ahhh yeah” shout-out to all the people fighting to use their hardware however they like. The PS3 is limited to FAT32 formatting, but with the release of this library, you can now hot-swap NTFS-formatted drives, making home development and backup easier — as well as perhaps allowing for easier playback of large video files. [via PS3Crunch - wait, PS3Crunch?!] → Read More
There’s been a lot of speculation in recent months about where Twitter would put down a European base in its efforts to expand its operation. Certainly I’ve been bugging them in the last few weeks about whether they would come to London. But now we have the answer: London it is – at least for five people whose jobs will be largely about sales and commercial partnerships. → Read More
It’s still winter, but once spring comes, it’ll be time to cut the grass again. If you’re too lazy, then let a robot do it — oh yeah the future is here. Husqvarna has been around for a while, but today are better known garden items instead of dirt bikes. Their latest offering is called the Automower 305 and it promises to lift the labor of grass cutting off of your shoulders. → Read More
Given that enabling PGP encryption is as easy as ticking a few boxes in both Mac OS X and Windows, it’s no surprise that the authorities are now increasing their efforts to combat the scourge of people wanting to keep their private data private. For starters, new Secret Service recruits are given a one-week crash course in computer forensics, presumably so agents will be able to say with confidence, “Oh, dear, this drive is encrypted, better call my supervisor.” → Read More
Google has been on a mission lately to outline some of the cooler, newer features coming to Chrome on their Chromium Blog. Today brings one of the biggest yet: Background Apps.
This feature has existed on various builds of Chrome/Chromium for some time now. But Google hasn’t been touting it, and it wasn’t really clear how it would be used and/or useful. Well today, it’s very clear. And again, very cool. Essentially, Chrome-based web apps are going to be able to be always open, but hidden in the background. → Read More
When you use a phone to take video, one of the major issues that makes that video look bad is that you’re unable to keep the image steady or straight. Tiny variations in inclination or rotation lead to ugly compression problems like skew, and anyway the image looks best when it’s stationary due to the H264 codec algorithms. You could, of course, put together a simple steadicam with a string and a washer, but this Kickstarter project from Woxom looks like a good “real” solution to the problem. The gimbal mount is really what makes it. → Read More
Ever find yourself posting a ton of pictures to Twitter and Facebook and Dailybooth and so on and so forth, just to have them fall into the digital abyss? The people behind vvall, a stealthish mobile photo app, have created GRID, a humble project that attempts to organize your social photos chronologically, separating your own and your friends’ online image trails by date and days of the week.
In a wider scope than Twitter apps like Lookedon, GRID right now covers four platforms (Facebook, Twitpic, PiczPlz, and Dailybooth) but aims to add others like Instagram, Flickr and Yfrog as soon as technically possible. This feat is obviously challenging, as there are 82 different apps that post photos to Twitter alone and dealing with all the limitations of different APIs is akin to herding cats. → Read More
A couple days ago, Readability was pissed off. In an open letter to Apple, they noted that the new subscription policy “smacks of greed”. And they threatened to abandon Apple’s platform in favor of the open web. This message resonated with many, as there’s a huge amount of unease about Apple’s new policy in the developer community. But now, just two days later, Readability has re-submitted their app to Apple for review. And apparently, a “love letter” to the company is forthcoming.
So why the change from war to peace? Has Apple’s policy already changed? Well, no — not yet, anyway. Readability’s Richard Ziade said his tweet was a “joke” and had this to say: → Read More
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