Vivint is rolling out an in-home tornado alert for its home security and automation systems that use the Go!Control panel. This free application will automatically download to users in 20 states through-out the US’s midsection. Once a tornado warning is issued in the customer’s area, the touchscreen Go!Control panel will beep loudly three times and then display a detailed message. This will… → Read More
For the past six years or so, my main desktop machine has been a string of iMacs. As an all-in-one machine, they’re both great to look at and simple to set up and use. But the power user side of me was always left a bit wanting. And it sounds like the iMac upgrades Apple has just unveiled this morning may fix that.
First of all, they’ve solved perhaps my single biggest complaint about the iMac… → Read More
Buffer, the app that makes it easy to schedule tweets, has announced that its users have sent 100,000 tweets in just four months since launch.
That’s a number, however, that’s hard to put into context perhaps, given that the service actively encourages more tweeting, albeit in a way that’s designed to annoy your followers less, but it does indicate traction for the bootstrapped startup. In… → Read More
We’ve covered Booshaka, a startup that takes Facebook search and adding a few bells and whistles to allow users to segment search by topic and provide trending topics around what people on Facebook are talking about. Today, Booshaka is bringing an intelligent layer to your likes, by ranking and classifying all of your activity on Facebook Pages using social signals such as posts, comments and… → Read More
Another bit of news out of BlackBerry World: The Playbook will get a native email app this summer with further PIM features coming around the same time. In addition, the Playbook will run Android apps inside an Android “player,” something akin to an emulator that allows for fully native Android support without recompilation. → Read More
Hells yeah. I would totally watch figure skating if all the routines were related to video games. Halo on ice! Super Smash Bros. on ice! CS_Dust on ice! Having a fine looking lady as the protagonist would help, too. Unfortunately it probably won’t become a trend as Neatorama points out this couple came in second. → Read More
We’ve all been there: you’re relaxing in the bath (or, as real men call it, the “ultra masculine germ-drowning station”), tappin’ away on your iPhone. Your left hand holds your $500+ handset inches above its certain electronic execution; your right hand is playing Angry Birds. In between shots, you unwittingly drop your right hand into the water — oh no! Now that… → Read More
By now, you may have run across a SoundCloud audio track somewhere out there in the wild, wooly Interwebs — perhaps during one of your mad, late-night music searches. In which case, you’re familiar with the tell-tale signs: The scrolling orange cursor, the messages tagged mid-song, and that distinctive social waveform layout.
For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, SoundCloud is the… → Read More
RIM, in a fit of charming magnanimity, will offer Angry Birds for Playbook this summer. That is all. → Read More
We wrote about Dapsem when they showed off their to-be-launched iPhone app at Techonomy3 in Tel Aviv a few weeks ago. I was impressed by the simplicity of the app, which simply allows you to give a maximum of three ‘daps’ (like a Facebook Like) a day to something or someone you want to praise or just acknowledge.
It is a stupidly simple concept but one which has lots of potential to scale and… → Read More
One of the most useful mechanical complications I saw at Baselworld 2011 was the time switching mechanism on the new Breguet Classique 5717 Hora Mundi watch. Aside from having a very clever feature for travelers, the Hora Mundi mixes contemporary looks with Breguet classicism. That sounds like a bit of a irony, but they seemed to pull it off. → Read More
Late last year, we wrote about ProFounder, a startup that offers entrepreneurs ways to raise money for their startups and ideas. At launch, ProFounder allowed entrepreneurs to share a percentage of their revenues with investors (their friends, family, and community) over time in exchange for an investment. Today, ProFounder is launching another option for fundraising-an equity term… → Read More
Hey, remember those Italian guys who spent 2 years trying to get their startup funded in Italy and raised $101K in 19 days when they arrived in the States? There’s a tendency on this side of the Atlantic to criticize European investors but it turns out they may not be so different from their American counterparts after all. The proof? It has just surfaced that Jimmy Fairly – a brand new “buy one… → Read More
Quanta, a Chinese hardware manufacturer, is reporting that they have received an order from Amazon to build new Kindle tablets, potentially with fringe field switching display touchscreens that may or may not mimic the screens found in devices like the Nook Color. → Read More
Smell that? Yeah, it’s the crisp smell of Sandy Bridge chips. The iMacs were starting to smell a bit stale with older Intel Core CPUs and low memory ATI graphic cards. Not anymore. Apple just rolled out the latest models and as expected, rock Intel’s latest i5 and i7 Core CPUs along with ThunderBolt I/O
The base model 21.5-inch model no longer slums with a Core i3 CPU. The budget iMac now has a… → Read More
Considering that the Web is changing and evolving every single day, the learning curve for newcomers — and even old-hands alike — can be steep. For those who are starting businesses and looking to learn more about how to use certain sites, products, or tools, the onramp can be difficult to find, not to mention maneuver.
Back in October, a startup called Grovo launched with the goal of tackling… → Read More
The march towards the generic Android tablet has begun. Most of the first Honeycomb tablets are indistinguishable from each other save one or two tiny differences. The Xoom hit the market first and still has arguably the best reviews while the G-Slate made a name for itself with 3D movies. Then there’s the Asus Transformer with its $150 optional keyboard dock and the Acer Iconia Tab with… → Read More
Electronic Arts (EA) has acquired Firemint, a privately held mobile development studio based in Melbourne, Australia. Firemint is the 60-people strong company behind games like Flight Control (see video below) and Real Racing.
EA says the deal is not material to the company, overall. Terms of the acquisition, which is expected to close within four weeks, were not disclosed. → Read More
Hardware and gadget freaks with a penchant for hand-made open source hardware now have a marketplace, which lets them sell and buy open (source) hardware online and worldwide. For sellers, inMojo solves the problem of limited sales channels and great ideas simply getting lost in the crowd. Open hardware buyers now have a destination to discover and compare new open hardware products in a collected… → Read More
Seagate’s latest hard drive breakthrough features an industry first of 1TB of data per platter. The Barracuda XT 3TB happens to be the first drive on the market with this high density platter and it’s ready to serve up your media and spreadsheets through the company’s GoFlex Desk product line. The 3.5-inch external drive comes NTFS formated and should hit the consumer distributional channel later… → Read More
Super angel investor Chris Sacca doesn’t like all the new competition pushing up valuations in angel deals and seed rounds these days. “It is a train and it is kind of running away,” he says on a panel this morning at the Wired business conference. “That layer of the market has an abundance of capital.”
Sacca, who funded Photobucket from his credit card and was one of the first to put money… → Read More
Say, for the sake of argument, you’re a minor league baseball player forced to spend $30 million in 30 days in order to get an inheritance of $300 million, but you can’t keep anything you buy. How would you do it? Well, you could start by buying a few hundred of these $61,000 cellphones and give them to homeless people with some SIM cards! That’s right: the Æsir is a gold or… → Read More
Long before Twitter launched a proper mobile website with enough bells and whistles to be actually worth using (December 2009) there was Slandr, a mobile website that allowed Twitter users, even those with feature phones, to access the service on the go. ReadWriteWeb gushed about the site back in May 2008, calling it the best (non iPhone) mobile Twitter app available. And I did use it at one… → Read More
After the nuclear disaster in Japan at the Fukushima reactors, the general public is understandably skittish about nuclear energy once again. But not Bill Gates. Speaking today at a Wired business conference in New York City, he is talking up the benefits of nuclear energy, particularly next-generation designs. The backlash, he thinks, is overblown. “If you compare it to the amount that coal… → Read More
Recently, Paris-based Tigerlily seemed like it was slipping under the radar. It’d been a while since we’d heard anything from the company that we suggested Nestlé take a look at when the brand came under fire on social media platforms last year. Tigerlily had also caught a bit of attention before, as it was a finalist for LeWeb in 2009 and the Europas last year. But the startup that specializes… → Read More
Social networking is definitely no longer targeting just the young adult demographic – and Kima Ventures wants a piece of the larger social networking pie. Xavier Niel and Jérémie Berrebi’s seed fund has just announced a $150K investment in YellowBrck, a Foursquare-like social network for parents. → Read More
For the past six years or so, my main desktop machine has been a string of iMacs. As an all-in-one machine, they’re both great to look at and simple to set up and use. But the power user side of me was always left a bit wanting. And it sounds like the iMac upgrades Apple has just unveiled this morning may fix that.
First of all, they’ve solved perhaps my single biggest complaint about the iMac… → Read More
A new startup has launched hoping to disrupt the food services industry and democratize the experience of having a personal chef. Munchery aims to bring personal chefs to the masses, giving consumers a way to access high-quality meals delivered to their home by professionals.
For most of us, employing a personal chef is not financially possible. But many consumers don’t have the time, patience or… → Read More
I don’t often like to post “numbers” news since we’re hardware guys, but this particular stat sticks out: Mike Lazaridis just reported that BlackBerry sold 150 million phones in the past 12 years and sold 15 million last quarter. To put this into perspective, Nokia shipped 108.5 million mobile devices in Q1 2011 while AT&T alone sold 3.6 million iPhones last quarter. Like the baby bear’s bowl… → Read More
Amazon this morning announced that it is debuting a brand new private sales site, featuring fashion items straight from designers and boutique brands.
The membership-only website, MyHabit.com, will offer daily events featuring up to 60 percent off a selection of styles, along with free four-day shipping shipping and returns. → Read More
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