I’ve never been a big fan of the “big phone” design so popular these past few years, starting with the HD2. However, I actually think I could carry around this big, flat (just 8.9mm, which Samsung is touting as the thinnest 4G device yet), and light 1.2GHz Android phone. Sure, it’s a monster — but it’s as thin as the iPhone, and the screen (4.5-inch Super AMOLED Plus model) is strikingly clear. → Read More
Hurrah! While it’s no secret that AT&T has been planning to offer up the Samsung Infuse 4G (with its absolutely gigantic 4.5″ Super AMOLED Plus display and 1.2 Ghz CPU), they’ve kept two little details under wraps: the price, and the launch date. Consider those bits unwrapped. At a press conference in New York this afternoon, Samsung and AT&T have confirmed that the… → Read More
Today at Social Loco, Google’s Marissa Mayer gave a keynote presentation outlining some of Google’s recent advances with its local products. She also unveiled two new features related to Local: a tablet version of Google Earth for Android, and a new extension of Places called Business Photos (which is essentially ‘Street View’ for business interiors).
Back in March at SXSW, Mayer announced that … → Read More
Universal password via browser extension Last Pass has announced on its company blog that it might have been the target of a hacking attempt on Tuesday, as it experienced an unidentifiable anomaly in traffic.
Still unsure if this is actually an attack or who was responsible, Last Pass, (whose slogan is ironically “the last password you’ll have to remember!”) initially asked users to change their… → Read More
What’s funny is that my headline reads like a pretty standard intriguing tech headline. Employees from a hot startup (Foursquare) create a new service (Subscribe To It) that has a monetization strategy from the start (subscriptions). Gold, right?
Ha.
Go ahead and visit Subscribe To It. It allows you to “Subscribe Now” for the low monthly fee of $1. And what do you get for that $1? Well, you get… → Read More
Can a $35 piece of plastic offer a compelling and immersive 3D experience? Well, yes and no. The Hasbro My3D is a fun idea – it’s basically a stereoscopic viewer that splits images on the iPhone or iPod Touch into two discrete sides. It really works and is quite cool when you initially try it.
When you look through the lenses you see a half-resolution 3D image that reacts to the motion of the… → Read More
Oh yes, France does indeed have a tech scene. And today, TechCrunch France is hosting the first edition of #TCFRecipes in Paris, an event that will cover all the ins and outs of what’s happening in the French startup world – in English – with some of France’s hottest entrepreneurs and investors. → Read More
News Corp’s IGN gaming and entertainment property has just acquired Hearst’s gaming and entertainment property UGO, we’ve confirmed with the company. And yes, the move is step one towards News Corp. spinning out IGN as its own property sometime relatively soon, we’re told. This news was first reported by MediaMemo a few days ago as the deal was still being finalized.
I got the chance to talk to… → Read More
It seems that Citizen Journalism is alive and well in the UK with news that Blottr, the London-based “user generated news” startup, has closed a “seven-figure” Angel round of funding.
Notably, the investment comes from Mark Pearson, founder of MyVoucherCodes.co.uk, who is in actual fact only putting in £250k up front with the remaining funding dependent on Blottr meeting certain “business… → Read More
This may look like a regular old Gameboy but there’s something “stellar” about it: it flew into space and returned with Russian kosmonaut Aleksandr A. Serebrov. Serebrov brought the game with him to the International Space Station and it played it as they orbited the Earth over 3,000 times in 192 days. You could say, if you were of the sort that made puns, that this Gameboy is… → Read More
LCDs are cheap these days. Dell’s daily deal is the Alienware OptX 22-inch monitor for only $200. That’s $100 of list and features 2 ms response time, an 80k:1 dynamic contrast ratio, and a 4-port USB hub. Admittedly, it’s still a bit pricey for the smaller size and lack of LED, but at least the Alienware label will earn you a bit of cred at your next LAN party. → Read More
Editor’s note: This is a guest post by HubPages CEO Paul Edmondson. Prior to founding HubPages, Edmondson was part of the executive team at MongoMusic, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2000, and held group management positions at MSN Entertainment over product management, quality management, operations, and business management.
Search engines are a critical part of the democratization of the… → Read More
True story: last week I was riding my bike and I reached down to my pocket to grab my phone to check the map. I saw a car coming around the corner and slammed on the brakes. A second later I was up, over the handlebars, and my phone bore the brunt of my fall. Luckily I had it in a case but, aside from my pride, nothing was damaged.
That’s why I like this pHOLD thing. It’s basically an iPhone… → Read More
There’s a neat line in the Facebook movie, The Social Network, that says something like Harvard students don’t seek a job, they create a job in reference to the fact that so many graduates go on to start their own venture. And while not all computer science graduates and those from related disciplines, either fresh from University or already in work, can be expected to found their own startup… → Read More
The Xoom isn’t selling well and no one has heard of any of the other Android tablets. You know what that means, right? Massive inventory excess might be coming! SALE! SALE! SALE! → Read More
Well thats a much better picture of the HTC Kingdom than that one from last week, wouldn’t you say? Plus, this one comes paired with specs. Tasty, tasty specs. Find’em after the jump. → Read More
Google has just released a new tool that visualizes search queries on its search engine from around the world. Called the Search Globe, the browser-based tool shows you where searches are coming from in a given day across the world. The visualization also shows the language of the majority of queries in an area in different colors.
Developed and designed by the Google Data Arts Team using WebGL… → Read More
Today at Social Loco, Google’s Marissa Mayer gave a keynote presentation outlining some of Google’s recent advances with its local products. She also unveiled two new features related to Local: a tablet version of Google Earth for Android, and a new extension of Places called Business Photos (which is essentially ‘Street View’ for business interiors).
Back in March at SXSW, Mayer announced that … → Read More
Qwerly, which originally pitched itself as a “DNS for people”, used to have profile pages along the lines of About.me. But no more. As of today the startup is pivoting (my apologies) and shutting profiles in favour of doubling down on its growing API business.
In an email to users today, CEO and founder Max Niederhofer told users that over the last few months demand for integrating Qwerly data… → Read More
May the 5th be with you! Yeah, I’m a day late on this one but it’s still worth your time. In fact, it’s totally more watchable than the real prequels. → Read More
When you call a watch a “tank” it can mean a few things. It can first mean a sort of square cased watch done in the style of Cartier Tank timepieces. That is not this watch. It can also mean a larger watch that is durable and can take a lot of abuse. That may be this watch. Finally, it can mean a watch that is a tank. That is this watch. Azimuth finally released their SP-1 Landship watch that has… → Read More
When we think of smartphones and geo-location the two main use cases that come to mind are mapping and check-ins. These are fine and dandy, but what if you could use smartphones to keep tabs of where your child is? Footprints lets you do just that.
The new app (iTunes link), available for both iPhone & iPad, tracks the location of the device and shares it with family and friends. These can… → Read More
The online dating industry majors rely on a fundamentally broken model, which may be good for their short-term balance sheets and providing people with meaningless entertainment but, as matchmaking service providers, severely limits them in offering people a genuinely optimal way to find that special someone, Zin.gl founder Alexander Dresen told me in a recent meeting.
In that meeting, I was… → Read More
Enterprise social networking platform Yammer, just debuted a brand new iPad app and today is rolling out a new version of its Adobe AIR-powered desktop app.
Yammer, which launched as the “Twitter for businesses” at TechCrunch 50 in 2008, offers a multi-platform communications app for businesses. In fact, we use Yammer internally at TechCrunch. → Read More
Local mobile advertising network xAD has hit an important milestone today—2 billion ads served. After serving one billion ads in the first 18 months since launch, xAD doubled this in the past 4 months, serving another one billion ads since January. The company is also bringing on a new CFO.
xAD, which raised $4 million in funding and wants to be the “AdMob of Local,” offers a local mobile… → Read More
Good morning. This is a xylophone made out of books. It’s running on some sort of sequencer connected to little hammers. To ask why this was built would be to ask one too many questions. via Roger Ebert → Read More
As a teenager, my parents constantly hounded me about where I was going, and when I would return. I didn’t have a cellphone, so communication was limited. Flash forward ten years and although many teenagers have cell phones now, it’s still annoying for kids and teens to constantly communicate with parents and worrisome for parents to not know of their children’s whereabouts. A new app will soon… → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable
I’m in Seattle this week. Seattle should be the envy of any non Silicon Valley tech community in the country. Great lifestyle, great cost of living, motivated people and only the crap weather on the negative side.
They have had their… → Read More
When security and toughness is paramount, call the Navy Seals. When you need a phone with similar attributes, Sprint and Motorola hopes you look towards the just-announced Android XPRT and Titanium. The XPRT is Sprint’s first Android phone with enterprise-class security, which comes by way 256-bit AES data encryption and enterprise-controlled security schemes and functions including remote… → Read More
Tokyo-based Regulus has just started selling the RDPF-7KIT [JP, PDF] in Japan, a super-cute Hello Kitty digital photo frame. The device comes with a 7-inch LCD with 800×480 resolution, 1W×2 speakers, and interfaces for SDHC/SD cards, USB drives, and Memory Sticks. → Read More
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