Now, let’s be charitable here and admit that it’s natural for people to perform similar duties in business as they might have in government, and vice versa. It’s called job experience. But honestly now. Voting in favor of the Comcast-NBC Universal merger and then leaving to join that company five months later? You’re joking, right? Other, more important people than me will… → Read More
When you think about ecommerce, you think about Amazon. But how did a company that started with online books come to dominate an estimated one third of ecommerce in the U.S.? In the 72 slides above, global consulting boutique faberNovel breaks down Amazon’s business and strategy. The keys to Amazon’s success are 1) the Internet imposes no limits on how much Amazon can sell; 2) its control of… → Read More
Here’s an easy project to make use of an old viewfinder camera you might have lying around. The big viewing windows on cameras like Rolleiflexes and Seagulls provide enough light to capture using a digital camera — and you can rig one up just using a Pringles can and a little elbow grease. Works best with a macro or telescopic lens, it looks like. The result may not replicate the… → Read More
Yahoo is likely to acquire advertising platform 5:1 for around $30 million, we’ve heard from multiple sources. The company first launched at TechCrunch50 in September 2009, and had raised around $13 million in various rounds of funding. About half of that was raised in November as part of a reverse merger IPO.
The company has deep ties with Ross Levinsohn, Yahoo’s EVP Americas and formerly the… → Read More
Here she is.
Earlier today, Google unveiled the first notebooks running Chrome OS. Or as they’re calling them, “Chromebooks”. The first two partners producing them will be Samsung and Acer. And at an event tonight in San Francisco, we got some extensive hands-on time with the Samsung Series 5 Chromebook.
Initial reaction? That’s still to come. For now, enjoy a bunch of pictures. → Read More
It’s hard for me to imagine being in a firefight at all, let alone having to make tactical decisions and communicate with other soldiers over the roar of tanks, guns, jets, and explosions. But our troops do it every day — after they’ve gotten used to it, at least. It can be a bit disorientating at first, as you can imagine, and this project by a Missouri professor is intended to get them… → Read More
If you miss being able to blather on about Android versus iPhone or express your irrational hatred of a certain author, startup or device without having to attach your name to it (and don’t want to go through all the trouble of creating a dummy Yahoo/Aol account) you might be in luck with a new Chrome extension that lets you comment sans identity on Facebook Comments.
Defaceable allows trolls… → Read More
Google announced yesterday that Google TV would be expanding and getting Android 3.1, but aside from some new manufacturers, there wasn’t much to show. Today, though, during another GTV-related developer talk, they showed off the new interface (above) and noted that the remote app API was being open-sourced. That’s nice — hopefully we’ll see more support in universal remote… → Read More
Today at Google I/O there was a fireside chat with a number of Chrome team members. Their goal was simply to answer questions — both from the web and from the audience. Among those, there was a common theme: what’s next?
One question asked each panelist what features they were most excited about going forward? Some answers were general — excitement about pushing HTML and CSS work forward. But… → Read More
A new Panasonic micro four-thirds camera, successor to the DMC-G2, is scheduled to be announced tomorrow in London, according to 4/3 Rumors. It’ll have a new 15.8-megapixel sensor, a 3″ articulating LCD, a more compact body, and a few other notable features. It’s supposed to hit the wire at 8AM in London, which is midnight here in Seattle. We’ll have all the juicy details… → Read More
The so-called Playstation Phone is out there internationally (May 26 is when it’s hitting the US), but sales haven’t been huge for its biggest feature: access to PSOne classic games via the Android Market. None of the games on sale has sold over a thousand copies, and most have sold far less. Speaking to Playstation Lifestyle, however, Sony Ericsson’s Dominic Neil-Dwyer said that… → Read More
Have you got a cheap LCD monitor around? It’s okay, you can admit it. I do too. My second monitor, a $200 Dell otherwise perfectly good, gets the stage light effect when it’s all black. You know, the little spotlights that seem to shine from the bottom? It’s due to the spaces between LEDs getting uneven lighting, and 3M has just come up with a solution.
And it’s a piece of tape. → Read More
New product giveaways have become something of a tradition at Google I/O. Last year attendees to the developer-focused conference walked home with two new Android phones (an Evo 4G and a Nexus One or Droid, depending on where they live). This year, everyone was given a new Galaxy 10.1 Honeycomb tablet a month before its release. And a few minutes ago, several hundred Android developers were given… → Read More
Earlier this week, we announced the launch of yet another startup accelerator in Europe. Oxygen Accelerator joined the growing list of YCombinator-like programs in the UK, including Hackfwd, Springboard, Seedcamp and Startupbootcamp.
Yet, while each of these programs provides seed capital and mentoring to early-stage startups, they differ in the way that they operate and interact with the local… → Read More
Kwaga, which offers a semantic toolkit to help manage email, has launched WriteThat.Name, a new product designed to help users keep their Gmail contacts up-to-date.
It does this by employing semantic technology to read the email signatures of incoming messages, noting any changes to included contact details. After all, if a contact changes their phone number or place of work, for example, their… → Read More
A New York research firm that turns massive amounts of data into streamlined information, CUBRC (pronounced “coo-brick”) invested $1.2 million in seed finance, and established a strategic partnership with GridGlo — a smart grid technology startup from Delray Beach, Florida, the companies revealed today.
GridGlo sells software and services that help utilities see how and why their customers… → Read More
Yesterday, Google showed off its “Open Accessory Development Kit,” a set of tools and hardware for connecting Android to a variety of devices via an Arduino-based board. I wrote how it indicated a new direction for Android, but I’m no technical expert on the stuff — I couldn’t say anything specific about the devices and capability. Make, however, knows what… → Read More
Yelp’s international sites have been growing like crazy, with non-U.S. traffic doubling in the past year. Today, it is adding a fifth non-English international site, Spain, to its roster. (The other international Yelp sites are in France, Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands).
Yelp is now at 50 million unique visitors per month, mostly in the U.S., according to its internal stats. ComScore… → Read More
Finally. Twitter has just unveiled a much needed revamp of its Twitter for mobile page, turning what was a pretty clunky looking mobile page into a more dynamic web app with icons for @replies, messages, your stream and search (which was missing from the mobile app previously).
But you know what the best thing about it is? Its landing page is exactly like the Twitter iPhone app interface… → Read More
If there was any question about Google’s commitment to Chrome OS, you clearly haven’t been following day two of Google I/O today. It’s all Google is talking about. And in every way possible. But the biggest angle being talked about is probably the opportunity for businesses.
And that makes sense. Getting Chromebooks into the business market solve two problems for Google: Microsoft and a new… → Read More
Just a few short moments after Google officially announced the Chromebook at its I/O event, the search giant also posted the Chromebook product page, offering up some some juicy details about what we can expect to see on these Chrome OS Notebooks for their June 15 arrival.
According to features listed on the product page, the Chromebooks are definitely catering to the demands of consumers, while… → Read More
Independent mobile ad network InMobi has signed a “multi-million dollar” partnership with Amobee, which provides “end-to-end mobile advertising solutions and services”.
The partnership will span three years, in which several million will pass hands as Amobee runs campaigns via InMobi’s ad network, giving a potential reach of 300 million consumers across 200 countries. The scale of the partnership… → Read More
Visa has announced plans for a digital wallet initiative designed to make mobile purchases quick and painless. The service should roll out later this year, and will only require an email (and probably a password) to make purchases, instead of having to type out your 16-digit credit card number, fill out the expiration date, and give the hidden 3-digit security code on the back. → Read More
Check out the graph in my March post about MySpace’s free fall in usage. After a long decline you’d expect a site like MySpace to plateau and find some sort of stable group of users. Instead, all the data says their decline is actually accelerating.
So I was surprised to see unique visitors level off over the last two months, according to Comscore. And by level off, I mean a straight line floor… → Read More
Well, well. We were wondering when Pioneer was going to clear the air about the so-called AppRadio we spotted in the FCC and later detailed a few weeks back. Looks like all will be revealed come May 25th. → Read More
ChromeBooks, centralized, almost entirely cloud-based machines by Google, will be available for students and schools at $20/per month/per user, enabling full updates, central login controls, and a central administrator panel to handle users and control access. → Read More
This might be a bit of inside baseball but NASA has added Pluto to its roster of planets, at least indirectly. The Register found an image on NASA’s home page showing the tiny “dwarf planet” wending its merry orbit out at the edge of our solar system, oblivious to its demotion to “big space rock.” → Read More
Today during a press Q&A following the Chrome keynote at Google I/O, Google co-founder Sergey Brin joined the panel to take questions about the announcements. Naturally, the questions strayed a bit. But Brin still did his best to answer them — sort of.
One question asked Brin about his new role at the company. Google recently saw the triumvirate of power swap places, which co-founder Larry… → Read More
The Google Chromebook is here — for real, this time. Google first announced the nondescript Cr-48 Chrome OS Notebook back in December of 2010 but the production version, now called Chromebook, was just announced at Google I/O 2011. The idea is the same as the original in that it’s basically a barebones computer that runs Google Chrome OS. In many ways the philosophy is a lot like… → Read More
Tired of getting nailed with a $35 fee every time you go 10 cents over your balance, but don’t want to outright block overdrafts on your account? Check this out: Bank of America is planning to roll out a new service that’ll send a notification to customers through a text message, prompting them for permission to allow the purchase. → Read More
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