Press kits are always good fun and Acura sent out a massive display for Thor. It’s supposed to be some sort of hero aptitude test but it’s really just a cardboard box containing random crap. The highlight is test #3 in which you’re suppose to reanimate a scorpion with an included sugar cube and then battle it until one of us dies. Well, the scorpion came with a broken tail and after nervously… → Read More
Remember Crush the Castle? Although the upstart Angry Birds has overshadowed their glory, Crush the Castle was one of the best “throwing stuff at stuff” games on the iPhone and iPad. To that end, the company has decided to create Siege Hero, a more cartoonish sequel to the more realistically violent CTC. I haven’t played it yet but I hear it’s fabu! → Read More
LAGOS, NIGERIA– I’m in Lagos to speak at an event and decided to come a week early to check out the country’s tech and entrepreneurship scene.
Apparently Arrington thought I was kidding when I told him this. But he should know by now, I don’t need a lot of arm twisting to visit a country of 150 million people chaotically surging into modernity. Where there’s that much opportunity, there’s always… → Read More
Good morrow! Welcome to the world of the future! We present to the public a Miraculous and Orotund Airship for the conveyance of people, cattle, and cargo from All Points On the Earth To All Others! How does this Majestic Airboat Fly? Through the Miracle Of Helium, a Safe Gas that will bear aloft almost any Great Mass. The Original Problem of many Airships was the maintenance of Bouyancy. As said… → Read More
The idea behind Grubwithus is an awesome yet simple one. You browse for a restaurant you’d like to go to in a certain city and buy a ticket for your meal at a set price. But the key is that others do this as well, all with the intention of meeting new people over dinner. And when you’re buying your ticket, you can see who your dinner buddies will be. Yes, it’s sort of like Groupon meets Meetup. → Read More
Brands may be pouring money back into online display advertising, but that doesn’t mean that display advertising works or won’t be replaced by something else in the next few years. Will it be social, mobile, or something else? At TechCrunch Disrupt NYC, we’ll get into this debate with three of the best operators in online advertising: Facebook’s new VP of Global Advertising Carolyn Everson… → Read More
Like Rdio, but think they could be doing a better job with their mobile app? Now you can prove it. Want to make a music app that plays nothing Eddie Murphy’s “Boogie In Your Butt” on repeat? Sure, why not! On Monday, Rdio will be announcing the launch of their Mobile API, allowing iOS and Android developers to tap into Rdio’s rather massive music catalog within their own… → Read More
Ze Frank wants to send us all back to kindergarten. Star.me, Ze’s soon-to-be fully public startup, which raised $500,000 from star-struck investors including Gary Vaynerchuk and Ron Conway, is an attempt to reinvent the kindergarten’s star system of rewards.
As Ze told me when he came into the TechCrunchTV studio earlier this week, “stars are good.” They make us human, they allow us to… → Read More
comScore’s mobile subscriber stats are in for the month and Android continues to top U.S. smartphone share over Apple and RIM. Additionally, during the three month average period ending March 2011, Samsung was top handset manufacturer overall with 24.5 percent market share. Google Android led among smartphone platforms with 34.7 percent market share.
The report shows that during the period, 234… → Read More
Hey, whatdy’a know: Mr. FedEx-Guy (or “Tom”, as we’ve come to know him) just dropped by with a shiny new Samsung Infuse 4G in tow. As we do with any Android-powered AT&T device, the very first thing we did was check to see if AT&T screwed up again. Surprise! They’ve finally done Android right! → Read More
This mouse is made of felt. Designer Joey Roth, he of the ceramic speakers, made it and he’s turning the cold, hard experience of mousing into a soft and sassy experience akin to rubbing a tame squirrel. He should be making the mice available over the next few month or, barring that, you could just tame a squirrel.
Popular commenting platform Disqus, which recently raised $10 million from North Bridge Venture Partners and Union Square Ventures, is adding support for a feature that’s both nifty and familiar: mentions within comments. It may not sound particularly sexy, but it could actually help foster better discussions in comment threads (more on that in a bit).
If you’ve ever mentioned someone on Twitter… → Read More
Tablets and electronic book readers are on a collision course. In this episode of Fly or Die , ChrunchGear editor John Biggs and I discuss the pros and cons of the new BlackBerry Playbook and the Color Nook from Barnes & Noble. The PlayBook is fast and a solid effort from our much-beleaguered Canadian friends. But is it too little, too late?
If you are a BackBerry user and want a tablet… → Read More
This is a rock solid deal for a rock solid media player. I can’t recommend the Zune enough for music listeners. It’s a gorgeous device with a great UI and no dependency on iTunes. This Buy.com deal nets you a 64GB Zune HD for only $219. That’s nearly half the price of a 64GB iPod touch. Once again, the Zune HD is for those looking to listen to music or watch the occasional video… → Read More
The U.S. solar industry is banding together to fend off an onslaught of global competition, and to lower the cost of manufacturing solar technology domestically. To make it happen, the newly formed U.S. Photovoltaic Manufacturing Consortium (PVMC) secured a $57.5 million federal grant from the Department of Energy Sunshot Initiative, along with financial commitments totaling $400 million from… → Read More
That didn’t take long. iPhone Dev Team just released a 4.3.3 jailbreak for the following devices:
iPhone3GS
iPhone4 (GSM)
iPod touch 3G
iPod touch 4G
iPad1
AppleTV2G (v4.3 8F202) → Read More
Settle down, PlayBook owners. You’re chance to buy high profit accessories is almost here. According to Pocket-Lint a Qwerty keypad is in the works and should be released in the coming months. Chances are it will look a lot like the the prototype keyboards previously leaked and picked up by both BlackBerryRocks and IntoMobile. [via NetbookNews] → Read More
The story of tech is largely about adoption, and adoption often comes into focus in the wake of cultural events. Last Friday’s wedding of Prince William to Katharine Middleton was the epitome of an event, bringing together YouTube watchers, Facebookers, Flickrers, Twitterers and even Colorers in a mass collective online experience of the festivities.
Taking place at 11 am London time (4 am SF… → Read More
Following our visit to Berkeley Bionics to talk with the team about their inspiring artificially intelligent, bionic devices, we were lucky enough to visit The Santa Clara Valley Medical Center (VMC) to speak with those involved in the clinical testing of this new technology as part of patient treatment.
Berkeley Bionics has been working in conjunction with VMC Chief of Spinal Cord &… → Read More
Man, it’s been a good week for U.S. Cellular customers. First you guys go and nab the LG enV Pro (albeit renamed as the “LG Genesis”) out from under Verizon’s nose, and now it looks like you’re getting an LTE network to call your own. You’re getting it this year, even! → Read More
Here is another chance for you to win a free ticket to this year’s Disrupt in NYC. Early bird tickets are no longer available, so this ticket is valued at around $3,000. This is one giveaway you don’t want to miss!
We have been announcing new guest speakers week after week. Arianna Huffington, Marissa Mayer, Ron Conway, Dennis Crowley, Charlie Rose and many, many more will be joining us. You can… → Read More
Netflix is leading the charge when it comes to streaming movies and TV shows over the Internet. It’s no longer focussed on DVDs, even though it is about to ship its 3 billionth disc. As bandwidth to the home increases, streaming will just continue to become more popular. At the Wired business conference earlier this week, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings predicted that gigabit-per-second speeds to… → Read More
Ah, robots. When they’re not busy planning world domination, they apparently play Angry Birds just like the rest of us. OptoFidelity, a Finnish company that specializes in machine vision and optical measurement technology, in addition to other things I don’t understand, recently produced a physical robot that knows how to kill nasty green pigs.
It most certainly beats the crap out of this… → Read More
It’s nearly impossible to get an Asus Transformer right now and it’s not because the tablet saw an iPad-ish firesale. No, the shortage was reportedly caused by low supply levels. Asus simply didn’t expect docking tablet to be in high demand. → Read More
Comparison engine FindTheBest has announced a key hire today. Former Google and DoubleClick exec Rabin Yaghoubi will be joining the company as President. At FindTheBest, Rabin will lead Business Development, Marketing, Sales and Operations from the company’s newly opened New York office.
At Google, Yaghoubi helped launch and lead Google’s content, commerce and local partnerships. At DoubleClick… → Read More
Except for a few of the pixels, this video is a completely accurate depiction of a 1980s, as shot through the lens of early American commercialism and the first hints of mass manufacturing in Asia. And no, this isn’t real. Pixar did it and they did an incredible job. via KungFuGrippe → Read More
Woaw that’s a long name for a watch! It goes back to my classic statement, the longer the name of a watch, the more the brand wishes for you to take it seriously. I supposed the reason that the name of this watch is so long is because it is a new piece in an ongoing series of tourbillon minute repeater watches with automatons by Ulysse Nardin. The last two in the Minute Repeater Westminster… → Read More
Software creator Janrain is bringing its social login SDK to Android phones today.
Janrain’s plug and play technology allows an app developer’s visitors to sign-in to the app with their existing accounts on Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo, LinkedIn or other networks and then publish their comments, purchases, reviews or other activities from the app to multiple social networks. → Read More
If you’re sittin’ there in iTunes with your finger hovering over the “Update” button, anxiously awaiting word of an untethered jailbreak for the just-released iOS 4.3.3: it’s go time. In fact, it was go time almost immediately after the update went out; turns out, the exploit that the iPhone Dev Team has been using for the last two builds of iOS is still wide open… → Read More
Customer support startup Zendesk is partnering with knowledge base company MindTouch today to offer a social help solution for customer service agents. Now support agents using Zendesk’s customer support SaaS, can query a MindTouch-powered knowledge base for quick answers. The idea is that customer support agents can share their knowledge base with other support agents to improve service to… → Read More
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