DISH Network and EchoStar this morning announced that they’ve agreed to pay TiVo $500 million to settle all of their ongoing patent litigation with the digital video recorder company.
Under the terms of the settlement agreement, DISH and EchoStar will initially cough up $300 million, with the remaining $200 million distributed in six equal annual payments between 2012 and 2017. → Read More
Yesterday Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual on Twitter) was just “an IT consultant taking a break from the rat-race by hiding in the mountains”, specifically Abbottabad, northern Pakistan.
The IT contractor and graduate of Preston University also says he’s a ‘startup specialist’ on his LinkedIn profile, but now owns a coffee shop.
But today he will become known as the guy who, while live-tweeting… → Read More
I don’t know how to start, so here we go: students from the Japan’s University of Electro-Communications have created a device that (kind of) makes it possible to transmit kisses over the web, from one person to the other. The way it works is that you use your tongue to move a piece of plastic, which is attached to a connected box, to simulate a kiss. → Read More
Just got a quick hands-on with the BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930 and I’m pleased to report it’s approximately the same size and shape as the previous Bolds with a large, usable keyboard and attractive back cover. Full gallery after the jump. → Read More
BlackBerry developer Research In Motion is definitely on a shopping spree. A week after announcing the acquisition of social calendering application Tungle.me, the company is buying smartphone software security developer Ubitexx. Terms of the acquisition, which was announced on Ubitexx’s home page, were not disclosed.
Ubitexx, which raised over $$4 million in funding, develops and distributes… → Read More
RIM just pulled the virtual sheet back on OS 7. The user experience is familiar but RIM promises a system that’s both faster and better suited for managing a personal and professional life with a new feature called Balance. OS 7 packs voice activated searches and a retooled browser to better handle JIT JavaScript and HTML5 video. It seem RIM is most proud of Balance, which “presents a… → Read More
An app that probably should have appeared on the Playbook at launch, video chat, is coming to tablet owners tomorrow morning in an OTA update. In addition to front and back camera support, the chat app allows you to make VOIP and video calls as well as connectivity based on the user’s BBID. The app features “powerful in-call functions” like – and I’m not making this up – “mute/unmute.” → Read More
The brand new BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930 is a 1.2GHz smartphone (RIM’s “thinnest yet”) that runs Blackberry OS 7 and includes NFC connectivity and a touchscreen interface. → Read More
Brightcove was issued a broad patent for the “Distribution of content,” which covers the basic features of a professional online video platform. Patent No. 7,925,973, which was applied for on August 12, 2005 by CEO Jeremy Allaire and CTO Bob Mason, describes some of the basic features of all professional online video players such as customizable players, digital rights management, and… → Read More
Kaminario, a provider of SSD storage products, this morning announced that it has secured $15 million in Series C financing. Existing backers Sequoia and Pitango were joined this time by new investor Globespan Capital Partners, whose managing director Venky Ganesan will take a seat on Kaminario’s board.
Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, with an Israel-based R&D… → Read More
Online local media and search company Local.com has acquired location-based shopping data aggegator Krillion for $3.5 million in cash. The company provides local shopping information on over 70,000 consumer products from over 50,000 retailers, including in-store availability, comparison pricing, current discounts and images.
With a separate news announcement, NASDAQ-listed Local.com has launched… → Read More
I’m here at Blackberry World in Orlando and I’m waiting patiently for news of a/many new phone(s). Keep your eyes on the prize here and I’ll be posting the news as soon as it happens at 8:30am Eastern/5:30am Pacific. → Read More
DISH Network and EchoStar this morning announced that they’ve agreed to pay TiVo $500 million to settle all of their ongoing patent litigation with the digital video recorder company.
Under the terms of the settlement agreement, DISH and EchoStar will initially cough up $300 million, with the remaining $200 million distributed in six equal annual payments between 2012 and 2017. → Read More
Here are some stories from the past week on CrunchGear: Now You Can Fabricate Your Own Strandbeest ThinkGeek’s USB Mushroom Lamp Provides Light, Not Super Abilities The White iPhone Is Official, Available April 28 “Slow Photography” Is Like Hipstamatic In Real Life Nintendo 3DS Takes Over The Jet Blue Terminal → Read More
Google Maps users have been busy as the news of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s mansion was breaking. A pretty large compound listed on Google Maps in the city of Abbottābad, northern Pakistan has been picked out by users as being the genuine article – and with huge walls around it, it does indeed look quite suspect.
Whether or not it is the genuine article is unknown, but that is not stopping… → Read More
Yesterday Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual on Twitter) was just “an IT consultant taking a break from the rat-race by hiding in the mountains”, specifically Abbottabad, northern Pakistan.
The IT contractor and graduate of Preston University also says he’s a ‘startup specialist’ on his LinkedIn profile.
But today he will become known as the guy who, while live-tweeting a series of helicopter flypasts… → Read More
As the initial hysteria (mostly justified) surrounding the Sony PSN breach subsides, more measured estimates of the damage are appearing, but more serious questions are becoming relevant. It’s still too early to be sure what the extent of the damage is, but the early and sensational estimates (propagated before Sony announced relevant numbers) seem to be giving way to a more complex, nuanced look… → Read More
If the Twitterverse is to be believed, President Obama is about to announce the death of terrorist and 9-11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden, in an impromptu announcement broadcast on Whitehouse.gov and TV this Sunday night at 10:45 EST.
The news actually hit Twitter before the President’s broadcast; CNN’s Steve Brusk first tweeted that the briefing was National Security-related at around 7:25pm… → Read More
Many years ago, after graduating college, I came home before moving to NYC, wondering how I would scrounge together the money for the first month’s rent and security deposit so my friends and I could all live together in the Big Apple. I had one month to get the cash, and instead of going out for traditional, hourly-wage work, I decided to go through all of my old stuff and throw it on eBay. In… → Read More
Yesterday, French site Consomac.fr did some digging into the latest developer preview build of OS X Lion and found something interesting. Buried in the code are references to a service named called “Castle”. Given the context of one of the mentions — “upgrade from MobileMe to Castle” — this led most to assume that the name referred to Apple’s upcoming cloud service overhaul. We can now… → Read More
Last weekend, our own Erick Schonfeld wrote an impressive in-flight diatribe against American Airlines; specifically their ineffectual social media representatives whom he described as little more than “a toothless marketing arm” for the company.
Of course, the usual dick of troll commenters (‘a dick’ is the collective noun for troll commenters, look it up) complained that personal rants have no… → Read More
Now this is a great idea: Nintendo has rented a few spots in the Jet Blue Terminal at JFK (I can’t confirm they’ve done this elsewhere but I’ll ask). They have folks on hand to show off the device and there are plenty of chairs and 3DS devices for kids and, presumably, the adults in charge of their care, to use. → Read More
The news from NBC/Universal/Comcast is that the cable giant has finally made deals with both ABC and Fox to carry selected shows on their on-demand service. This is big news for the iPad set, because all four major broadcast networks are now available in a single service, on the iPad, without Flash.
Across town we hear talk of hardware acceleration linking up with Android to make Flash finally… → Read More
We’re back for a new episode of OMG/JK (in HD!). This week the news has been all about private data — Google and Apple have been accused of tracking your every move (they aren’t), and Sony has revealed that 77 million user accounts were compromised (this, unfortunately, is true).
Tune in to find out where things stand now, and where to get the best deal on your tinfoil hat.
Here are some… → Read More
Inuit’s GoPayment reader, which competes directly with Square, is about to become more attractive to small businesses. The company has made the decision dropped the transaction fee ($0.15 per transaction) for both new and existing customers for Visa, MasterCard and Discover cards, both swiped and key-entered as well as qualified and non-qualified transactions. The move will go into effect on… → Read More
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