Samsung’s medium-size Galaxy Tab 8.9 is my favorite of the upcoming Android tablets, just based on its form factor and pixel density. And after seeing it on video, I’m more convinced than ever that it’s a decent machine, though I’ll have to hold it in my hands before I’m sold on the TouchWiz UI, which looks a little bit laggy in this video. → Read More
If this leaked internal listing is legit, it looks like HP’s TouchPad will be coming to Wal-Mart for $599 for a 32GB model. We heard that it would be $699 earlier, and likely that price will still exist for the 64GB version. Will there be a cheapie one for $499? No word. We’re pretty sure it’s going to hit in June, though, so stay tuned for further leaks as the launch date… → Read More
I’m not exactly enthused by the idea of these rolling/hovering hybrid robots crawling and zipping all over the earth. Sure, they could be useful in a military or rescue situation, able to conserve power by sitting comfortably on the ground but navigate freely in the air if necessary. But they could also be replicated at large by the machines when the Robocalypse comes, at which point they’ll roll… → Read More
After fours years of tweaking and pivoting, WorldTV, which brings a TV channel-viewing experience to online video publishing, finally thinks it has the model right and is flicking the switch on an in-app store for à la carte premium features.
The ‘friends and family’-funded company has been cashflow positive since 2009 but after experimenting with an ad-supported model, which proved… → Read More
A lot of watchmaking is aspirational. Since the 1700s, watchmakers have wanted to create simulacrum of the items that explorers, engineers, and soldiers carried into their daily scrum for dandies on the boulevard who ascribed a sense of romance to their professions. That’s why watch collectors love war watches. They basically allow folks who may have never been to war to feel like they own… → Read More
There’s no denying that the latest cool displays are making important advances. But that doesn’t mean they’re quite ready for prime time. Take the flexible, 13.3″ color e-paper being shown by Sony over at SID right now. Without a doubt it’s cool stuff, but be honest — would you buy something using it? Not just yet. → Read More
The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, held his first ever interactive Q&A session with Twitter followers today, and TechCrunch Europe was the only external party allowed in to witness the event. To some extent I was also there to verify the event actually happened!
The session, which was not pre-announced, used the hashtag #AskBoris and quickly took off amongst the Mayor’s 152,000+ followers at… → Read More
So it turns out that almost nobody wants people to check out their purchases. And also that just adding a social element to a feature isn’t enough to make it useful. The lessons of user adoption are sometimes learned the hard way.
Thus is the story of the failure of Blippy, a product that launched in private beta in December of 2009 and that we breathlessly fawned over again, and again, and … → Read More
Today, LinkedIn officially started trading its shares on the New York Stock Exchange, Facebook may not be too far behind in its own public offering. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg spoke briefly about the possibility of a Facebook IPO at Reuters Global Technology Summit today, saying that a public offering of Facebook shares is “inevitable.” Reuters reports that Sandberg declined to comment on when… → Read More
I actually can think of good reasons for something like this to exist. Maybe for police pistols, for instance? Still, it’s a bit creepy, especially if those pictures on the side there were taken with live film and live ammo. Hopefully they were just for demonstration. The camera is in the Dutch National Archives Flickr stream, but is given a “New York, 1938″ locality. Maybe they… → Read More
Gartner has just released some numbers describing the worldwide mobile market, and while these numbers haven’t been confirmed by the companies concerned, they still provide a valuable estimate of how things are going out there. Total handset sales grew nearly 20% over the same period last year, with smartphone sales nearly doubling. Android long ago passed up Symbian, and iOS showed huge… → Read More
Health care is a mess in this country, especially the payments and insurance side of the equation. But as I mentioned in my last post on Brighter, a new group of startups are attacking the problem by giving consumers better information and tools to take control of their healthcare dollars. Let’s call it DIY health reform.
Another startup launching today in private beta, Simplee, is very much… → Read More
F1 racing has long been a technology battle, and while the driver is an important component, his role has been increasingly supplemented by computers and engineers. This is perhaps no more visible than on the steering wheel which, once just the way you changed the direction the tires pointed, has turned into an Xbox-esque controller for a huge variety of precision settings and high-tech abilities. → Read More
Paper.li this morning announced new curation and management capabilities for its publishing platform, which basically allows individuals and publishers like HBO create personalized online newspapers by incorporating Twitter and Facebook streams into a familiar newspaper layout.
Paper.li earlier this year raised $2.1 million for its social news curation platform, and is today also announcing a… → Read More
I’ve always been slightly bothered by the updated graphics in Super Mario All-Stars, but at the same time I can’t deny that it’s a fantastic cartridge to have around. Hacker Callan Brown apparently felt the same way, and decided to do a little investigation into perhaps remedying the situation. The result? A sweet megacartridge with an old-school way of selecting which game you want. → Read More
Jimdo, a service that lets anyone create a good-looking website without too much effort, is on a roll. The tool has now been used to build over 4 million websites, and 200,000 more Jimdo-powered sites get published every month.
Last year, the German startup behind the service rolled out a feature that let anyone create an online store, quickly and easily. Fast forward 15 months and 40,000 online… → Read More
Microsoft is rolling out a new update to the Xbox 360 which adds a few new features. Gamers in some countries can now link their PayPal accounts to their 360s and buy stuff that way, and standby mode has been tweaked.
Coincident with this update (coming over the next two weeks) comes the news that a recent firmware update adding support for the new expanded disc capacity feature may not be… → Read More
It is no revelation that the healthcare payment system in America is broken. That includes dental plans, where an estimated 50 percent of the $110 billion Americans spend each year on dental bills is paid out of pocket. Jake Winebaum thinks there is a better way to reduce those out-of-pocket expenses, and he’s quietly launched Brighter to offer online marketplace for dental care with negotiated… → Read More
Streaming media is the future. You know this if you’ve used Netflix, Rdio, Grooveshark or any of the other popular music services. Apple is said to be getting into the game as well and a recently-released patent application from 2009 shows iTunes streaming will in fact offer something different from the rest of the players.
As much as I love Rdio, and I do love Rdio, I can’t always guarantee that… → Read More
In the post-apocalyptic hellscape that will be next week, we’re going to need people who know how to make unique electronics projects in order to power the homes of the cannibals who will populate our cities. To that end, we present this interesting DIY Electrostatic motor that will power, for example, a fan used to blow flies away from the new God-King who will rise to take his place on the… → Read More
Google has rolled all of its finance tools into one product today, merging its mortgage, credit card and bank account comparison tools into Google Advisor. Google Advisor allows you to compare offer options for your credit cards, checking and savings accounts, CDs or mortgage.
With Google Advisor, users can enter in whatever criteria they’re looking for and get multiple offers side by side. → Read More
Music streaming services are are becoming a dime a dozen, and that’s before we factor in the expected launch of Apple’s own cloud music offering. Today, Best Buy-owned Napster, the Old Skool player of yesteryear (by brand name only) has unleashed its mobile apps here in the UK.
Like Spotify, We7 and a raft of European and U.S. music streaming services, Napster Unlimited plus Mobile, available on… → Read More
After opening to $83 per share and a market cap of $7.8 million, LinkedIn closed at $93.86 per share, giving the company a valuation of $8.9 billion. Although the professional social network priced at $45 per share, trading started at $83 (up 84 percent) and reached as high as $122.70 and as low as $80.
In total, LinkedIn raised $352.8 million in gross proceeds from the offering of 7,840,000… → Read More
A photographer named Linhbergh Nguyen bought a camera from B&H photo in New York, a camera store run by Satmar Hasidic Jews in a manner that more resembles Katz’s Deli with its arcane ticketing/receipt system than a retail establishment. On the camera he found some shots inside what appears to be a testing lab in the store, which is interesting but not the real draw. → Read More
Toshiba — the diversified tech company best known for its consumer electronics, lighting and HVAC systems — is coming after the smart grid market in Europe and the U.S. with the acquisition of a Swiss smart grid tech firm, Landis+Gyr. Toshiba announced a commitment to acquire Landis+Gyr for $2.3 billion today.
The company makes power distribution, metering and smart home software and systems… → Read More
NFC payments have already become somewhat of the norm over in Japan, but here in the States, near field communication technology hasn’t quite taken off yet. However, that’s not to say that U.S. Americans aren’t ready to use their cell phone as a wallet, as shown by a study conducted by MasterCard. → Read More
This week Erick and I received two invites to the Google Music Beta and I also discovered that Erick is a secret 90s classic rap fan who used to drink the brass monkey while whiling away the hours in his college dorm room. Who knew?
We also tried out the new Seagate GoFlex Satellite wireless hard drive and discussed why I loved the New Yorker iPad app so darn much. Plus, at some point in the… → Read More
Video search engine Vuclip has raised $8 million in Series C funding led by NEA and Jafco Ventures. This brings the company’s total funding to nearly $20 million.
Vuclip is an independent mobile video service that is accessible via mobile browsers, leveraging HTML5 technology to power the platform. The service is popular in international markets including India, Malaysia, and Indonesia. … → Read More
Five years ago, if you’d told a fellow book lover that eBooks were poised to surge in popularity and overtake traditional books, you probably would have been met with a scoff and a dismissal about reading too much sci-fi. And yet here we are: Amazon has just announced that it is now selling more eBooks than it is selling print editions, a mere four years after launching the Kindle. Obviously… → Read More
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