We’re not going to say much about the images above, because… well, there’s just not much to say. 911HTC — a site that many an HTC handset hacker has in their bookmarks, as they seem to get their hands on just about every HTC ROM weeks before the relevant device’s release — released the two images above. The left handset, they say, is called the HTC Kingdom; on the right, the HTC Rider. Outside of the names, the only detail given is that the Kingdom purportedly packs a 960×540 (qHD) screen. So.. what are we looking at here? (We mean that quite literally, as the blurriness of these blurrycam shots makes it tough to say that we’re actually looking at phones, much less new phones) Are these international versions of announced handsets? The Rider sure looks a lot like the EVO/EVO 3D. Be sure to let us know if you hear anything about these guys — we’ll be sure to do the same. → Read More
There’s no doubt that there’s been both an explosion of growth in mobile app downloads and app stores. While Apple’s App Store has dominated in terms of number of apps and downloads, Distimo just released a study that projects the Android Market will become the largest store in terms of number of applications in about five months from now, passing the App Store.
Today, ABI research is reporting that the app industry is on its way to achieving 44 billion cumulative downloads by 2016. Similar to Distimo’s findings, ABI reports that Android and Windows Phone 7 are steadily catching up with Apple in terms of downloads. → Read More
A charming couple in Ottawa, Canada, Chrys and Dom Coballe, is making some handsome, if expensive, iPod Nano watch bands that pop out and even turn at an angle to offer multiple viewing angles. Although I think the hey day of the iPod Nano watch is over, they seem far too charming to just ignore. → Read More
Ancient Chinese proverb says, “Man who goes against Apple will lose his right to eat any fruit ever again.” Digitimes is reporting through Chinese-language sznews.com that three employees were arrested by local police on December 26, 2010 and eventually charged on March 23, 2011 for violating the company’s trade secrets. Reportedly these employees leaked the iPad 2′s design to accessory makers. → Read More
When Color came out with its $41m play, a rather lesser known startup had planned to launch around the same time – as these things go. How often does that happen? Pretty darn often no doubt. But while Color got all the press – not least for its funding – the lesser known Pixamid has had to wait for its time in the sun. But while I have struggled – really I have – to get into Color, Pixamid has given me pretty much exactly what I wanted out of this kind of app [iTunes link] from the word go. Today at the (sixth annual) Next Web conference in Amsterdam, I met CEO and founder Bart Denny who demo’d the app to me. → Read More
Good news, everyone! The Not-So-Great Verizon 4G Outage of 2011 is over! If Sony and Verizon are battling for the best outage of April here, we’re going to have to go ahead and side with Verizon. Only down for one day and they didn’t hand all of our personal information over to hackers? High fives, Big Red! As for what caused the outage: gnomes. At least, that’s our best guess — Verizon isn’t saying beyond “Our network engineers and vendors quickly identified the issue and solved it”. (Heads up, 3G/4G Laptop Modem users: you might see some weird delays when jumping from 3G to 4G. Verizon is working on it.) → Read More
Silicon Valley startup Cooliris demoed the next version of its social communication and media sharing app LiveShare to me earlier this week, and I was blown away by exactly how instant the sharing of photos, videos and whatnot has become. The tool, which isn’t available yet, is shown in a demo video (embedded below).
Cooliris LiveShare lets you share photos, videos, maps, articles and more with others by the tap of a button or simply by dragging content to a stream or group of people. As you can tell from the video, the sharing itself is as real-time as real-time can get. → Read More
The more CEOs try to defend their products in the public arena, the sadder they sound. For example, Stephen Elop’s discussion of an upcoming (as in not ever shipping) Nokia tablet smacks of careful CEO talk and whiff of BS. When describing Nokia’s future plans for the device, he hedges his bets, saying that they may go Microsoft or they may go somewhere else (Ubuntu?) and that they don’t want to be another me-to tablet and instead they want to create something amazing and special. The last time Nokia created something amazing and special was probably 1999 when Neo talked to Morpheus on a modified Nokia 8110. → Read More
Another day, another new tablet: this times it’s actually two tablets [JP] coming from Japanese maker Onkyo (they aren’t the company’s first ones). Both devices, the TW317A7PH (pictured) and the TW117A6PH, run on Windows 7 Professional and are primarily aimed at businesses. → Read More
Y Combinator-backed Cardpool recently launched the ability to sell a gift card online without having to mail it in via snail mail. Cardpool launched this feature because the startup realized that many customers didn’t want to wait for cards to arrive in the mail and were impulsive buyers. Now the startup is taking this one step further with the launch of Cardpool Mobile, a web app that allows customers who have an iPhone or Android phone purchase discounted gift cards that are instantly delivered to their phone so they can use them in store or online immediately.
Customers can literally be waiting in line at the checkout counter, and can purchase gift cards at discounted rates for the value. Cardpool allows you to buy card at discounts (which vary depending on the store), users get more for their money. For example, for a $30 BestBuy card you will receive a 6 percent discount. → Read More
Yandex, one of the leading Internet companies in Russia, this morning announced that it has filed a registration statement with the SEC for a proposed initial public offering, as expected. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the offering have not yet been determined, but the Wall Street Journal recently reported that the company had been given a preliminary valuation of between $6 billion and $9 billion ahead of the filing.
According to the filing, the proposed maximum aggregate offering price amounts to $1 billion, which should give you an indication of how much Yandex seeks to raise. → Read More
Two years ago, crowd-funding phenom Kickstarter launched with a handful of projects. Anyone with an idea for a film, album, art project, or product could make their pitch, say how much they needed to get started, and ask for pledges. Once the minimum amount needed was pledged, the project would get started. Today is Kickstarter’s birthday, and it is releasing some stats.
Over the past two years, $53 million has been pledged for 20,371 projects. Of that money, $40 million has been collected, going towards 7,496 successful projects (meaning they raised enough money to get off the ground). Over the same time period, 9,700 projects were unsuccessful and 3,175 are still live.
That means Kickstarter projects overall have a 43 percent success rate, and 85 percent of money that is pledged ends up being collected. The money pledged on Kickstarter is growing steeply (see chart). In March, $7 million was pledged, up from about $5 million in February, and $4 million in January. April will be even bigger. → Read More
One of the largest chemical companies in Asia, Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. in Japan, has formed a partnership with San Diego, Calif.-based Genomatica, a sustainable chemicals startup, the companies revealed today.
Genomatica converts sugar from corn wet mills, sugar cane and sugar beet — among other sources — into butanediol (BDO), a chemical used to make everything from the plastics in consumer electronics and cars, to the spandex and foam found in athletic shoes and apparel.
The chief executive and founder of Genomatic, Christophe Schilling, explained… → Read More
There is also the Sportster Saguaro Meteorite version of the watch that has a really nice Gibeon meteorite dial. I first wrote about the Bovet Sportster Saguaro Meteorite watches here. Bovet claims the space stones that make up the dial are something like 4 billion years old – that is pretty cool. These are my favorite Sportster watches because I really like how the meteorite gives a sort of organic feel to the otherwise composed case and design. You can get various meteorite stone stains such as silver, black, and gold. All the Sportster Saguaro watches are 46mm wide in really chunky looking cases. Like I said, these cases feel like hefty canisters, holding precious innards. The cases are thick and highly polished with a wide bezel. Though the design doesn’t feel massive because of the single lug style, it is a rather clever way of making a larger watch feel not as large. Read the rest here… → Read More
http://www.dorkly.com/moogaloop/noobtube.swf?clip_id=14583&use_node_id=true&fullscreen=1 See, everything is better with a Portal gun. Now let’s give the Contra commandos a Portal gun and see what happens. → Read More
Those owners that decided to ride the Xoom’s early adopter boat should see an update later today. The patch should fix some of the issues with WiFi connectivity as it address proxy supports well as WPA Pre-Shared Key passphrases for mobile hotspots. The Xoom will play nicely with SSL-encrypted websites and Google Widevine video DRM. The update also allows the Xoom to see and use any ol’ Bluetooth mouse and adds Bluetooth headset support to Google Talk. Sadly, there’s no mention of adding LTE support just yet. Verizon previously stated that it was coming this spring, which makes the deadline ’bout a month a way. [Verizon via DroidLife] → Read More
Where there are startups, there are great investors backing them up. The resurgence of New York City as a startup capital the past few years has witnessed the rise in prominence of several East Coast investors across the spectrum from super angels to super VCs. Today, we are incredibly pleased to announce that Fred Wilson, John Borthwick and Josh Kopelman will all join us for this year’s Disrupt in NYC.
All three invest early and often, and represent a new breed of founder-friendly investors who contribute more than just capital. Speaking of money, if you still haven’t purchased a ticket and would like to do so, tickets are available here.
On the super VC end of the spectrum, it’s hard to compete with Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures. He was an early investor in Twitter, Zynga, Foursquare, Tumblr, and Etsy, Wilson is also a proficient blogger and an avid user of Web products, which is why founders like Jack Dorsey and Dennis Crowley seek him out. → Read More
Back in October 2008, KillerStartups acquired the domain name Startups.com for roughly $500,000 in cash. About a year later, Startups.com was relaunched as a Q&A site for business questions. Today, KillerStartups is launching a new initiative: a daily deals site for Internet entrepreneurs and online business owners.
The new site, which will be hosted at Startups.com (the Q&A section moved to answers.startups.com) will feature a 50% to 80% discount on useful Web applications, software, ebooks, gadgets and other resources entrepreneurs might need. → Read More
Toshiba yesterday announced [JP] an SD card that has a very special feature: it allows users to store up to 1GB of content, but following that, the content can not be erased or modified in any way. Other than that, the so-called Write-Once Card (which, needless to say, can’t be formatted either) looks like any other SD card and can be used just like a conventional card, too. → Read More
