It’s that time again: time for a live discussion of a new piece of technology LIVE. Today we’re talking about the Xoom for a full hour and I’m going to try to go through what I can and hopefully you can tell whats going on given the various limitations of the MacBook Air’s camera and the high gloss of the screen.
I’ll be going over some of your direct questions and you can feel free to Tweet us with the hashtag #crunchgear, chat, or, if you’re feeling particularly Web 2.0, leave a comment. → Read More
It looks like a tiny bugle. Maybe a new way to measure shots for a drink? Maybe a Cracker Jack toy? A fancy oil funnel? A tiny phonograph horn designed by Eero Saarinen? A mod megaphone? An egg separator? A microscope? A straw for Tony Montana-style mountains of blow? A wicked monocle? → Read More
The Motorola Xoom, like the iPad, is mostly dead air and a battery. iFixIt did their best to tear out all the important bits, finding a large screen, a handsome circuit board, and what appears to be a dead PCI board dedicated to future upgrades. → Read More
The crusading Phil Torrone offers us a long and detailed list of things Sony has done in the past decade or so to stifle CE innovation and prevent the unauthorized use of their hardware. Whether you’re on the side of “hack everything every day” or, on the other hand, wish these script kiddie pirates would just shut up, you have to admit that Sony’s often ham-handed techniques have diminished their reputation in the hardware hacker community and, in some way, has reduced their overall market share.
This is just the first part in Torrone’s long rant against the company. Here’s his opener, an inspiring jeremiad against Sony’s long-departed power and modern failures. → Read More
It looks like recruiting service Pursuit has been gobbled up by Facebook, the latest in a string of acqui-hires, judging by the brief message on their homepage:
“Update: we’ve found a new home at Facebook! Although we’ll be working on stuff unrelated to Pursuit, keep an eye out for great new features from us there and thanks to everyone who helped along the way.”
The San Francisco based Pursuit was just three extremely over-educated guys — Louis Eisenberg, Russ Heddleston, Nicholas Letourneau — who according to their digital “Gone Fishing” sign, will be dropping Pursuit in um, pursuit of other things at Facebook. This is not surprising, as Facebook acquisitions are almost always about engineering talent versus product. → Read More
Workers in a Chinese factory used by Apple have hit out at a proposed 80,000 yuan ($12,167) settlement. Some 115 workers there had been exposed to the toxic chemical hexyl hydride, with the owners of the Suzhou factory offering 80,000 yuan as compensation to take care of medical bills and the like. That’s not good enough, say some of the workers. → Read More
When there’s a new gadget, iFixit simply must tear it apart in the name of gadget pr0n. This includes the latest MacBook Pro. The firm found that the battery is the same as the current generation even though the advertised life is slightly lower. (or rather more realistic) It’s also secured separately from other components, allowing it to stay in place rather than removing it when working on other sections of the notebook. The new models also feature a slightly different wireless card design with four antennas rather than three and aluminum mounting brackets. In the end, iFixit deemed the latest model a 7 out of 10 in regards to ease of repair with 10 being the easiest. This is thanks to the relatively compartmentalized internal design. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Apple knows a thing or two about notebook design. → Read More
The HTC Merge! Remember that thing? It was the focus of almost constant leaks back in 2010 (like this one, or this one , or this one) and then… nothing. It pretty much disappeared off the radar, with word that HTC had gone back to the drawing board to add LTE support. Well, the HTC Merge is finally a real boy. → Read More
Sony has dropped the suggested retail price of the PSP-3000 (not the PSP Go, then) from $170 to $130. Buy the PSP, then use the $40 to grab the new Tactic Ogre. Done and done. → Read More
If you’re like us, you may have a hard time remembering where you placed one of those remotes of yours that keeps secretively slipping away. You may have even given up after searching for it for hours. As a surprise, for this week’s giveaway, we were lucky enough to have Logitech offer to help us give away two, yes two, Harmony Ones.
A Logitech Harmony One is basically the only remote you will ever need. Whether you want to watch a DVD, TV show, or listen to music, the Harmony One makes it incredibly simple to do so. → Read More
When Martin and Felix of Urwerk wanted to create something new – they had to sit down for a while and think about what they had done before, and what they could follow up with that was unique in the watch world. Doing that is really tough. Even the satellite time telling system that Urwerk is known for isn’t unique to them, originating a long time ago elsewhere. Urwerk just sort of adopted the satellite system of telling the time and made it their own. The Torpedo – as the UR-110 is also called – does two things differently. It modifies the satellite system a bit offering a fun new visual spectacle, and put it in a case that is novel, as well as weird. → Read More
What you see here is a Macintosh promo video produced by Apple for a marketing event in 1984. The video celebrated a few things including a) Flashdance b) the launch of the Macintosh c) our inexplicable fascination with Patrick Nagel. → Read More
While this device may look like an old Fisher-Price Tape Player, what we have here is a bonafide music playback device designed for Google (probably as some sort of Tchotchke/giveaway) by Chord Electronics. The stereo is a variant of Chord’s Chordette Carry with inputs on the back for multiple devices as well as Bluetooth support. → Read More
Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen a blooming of new Q&A sites which are both social and informative. While Quora gets a lot of our attention here at TechCrunch because of the quality of the answers it generates, it is still tiny compared Formspring, Stack Overflow, and most of its other competitors. Formspring, in particular, is killing it once again after a drop-off in activity in the middle of last year.
According to comScore, Formspring had an estimated 1.1 billion pageviews in January, up 65 percent from September, and almost back up to its peak of 1.3 billion last May. Formspring also attracted an estimated 19 million unique visitors worldwide in January, compared to 3.1 million for Stack Overflow and only 496,000 for Quora. (Albeit, Quora’s visitors grew nearly 90 percent from December to January alone, compared to 5 percent monthly growth for Formspring. However, Formspring is adding about one million new members a month). → Read More
As we’ve written in the past, OneRiot recently switched its business model; shutting down its search portal and focusing exclusively on monetizing via its realtime advertising network. Today, the startup is launching a social targeting service for mobile ads, that the company claims offers highly targeted ads within mobile apps.
By way of history, OneRiot first ventured into the advertising world in 2009 with RiotWise, an ad format which places content in an emphasized position in their realtime feed. OneRiot also launched RiotWise Trending Ads, a stream of ads that correspond to trending topics as they emerge across the social web, and rolled out self-refreshing realtime trending ads and a self-service version of RiotWise. Currently, OneRiot CEO Tobias Peggs says the company is seeing 2 billion impressions per month across its network (for context, Google’s AdMob sees 2 billion impressions per day). → Read More
If there was any doubt in peoples’ minds that Apple intends to kill off the optical disc, it was put to rest today. This morning’s unveiling of the OS X Lion Developer Preview came with the news that it would only be available one way: through the Mac App Store. And while Apple wouldn’t say if they intended to release the final version of Lion to consumers this summer in the same way, it’s pretty clear that they’re going to do just that.
But this important push into the post-optical disc era hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing for all so far. → Read More
You might remember NTT‘s electronic bracelet that identifies and tracks the wearer’s actions and that we showed you back in September last year. It now turns out the Japanese tech powerhouse has further developed the concept in the meantime: earlier this week in Tokyo, NTT showcased [JP] the latest version (there is now an English site, too). → Read More
Short version: Superior Drummer will save you a lot of money if you’re into music production. The steep learning curve is compensated with the depth of settings and options offered. → Read More
A few weeks ago, social commerce network Lockerz acquired photo sharing app Plixi as a way to boost photo sharing on its platform. It looks like the company has hit the ground running in terms of integrations and today is launching a new photo sharing app.
Lockerz, which has raised $30 million from Kleiner Perkins newly launched sFund, Liberty Media and Liberty Media’s CEO Greg Maffei, revolves around the idea that influencers within a social network can become brand and content advocates and affect the behavior of their friends. The site attempts to build a community of trendsetters and tastemakers who love to shop, play and connect on the Web and allows users can earn points and discounts on brands by sharing content on the site. → Read More
Auto maker BMW recently established a New York-based venture capital firm dubbed BMW i Ventures that it seeded with $100 million to seek out partnerships that might facilitate BMW-i product adoption in urban markets. BMW-i is a BMW sub-brand solely focused on developing and producing sustainable mobility vehicles.
Its first investment was made public this week: BMW pumped $5 million into MyCityWay, a user-driven, location-aware city guide. FirstMark Capital and IA Ventures, who participated in an earlier $1 million seed round, joined BMW. → Read More
