Nikon Displays Mysterious Prototypes At French Exhibition Sweet-Looking Bike Tool Roll Made From My Favorite Material, Waxed Canvas Dodocase Puts Out Some J. Crew Exclusive iPad 2 Cases SocialBicycles Bike Sharing Is Now A Kickstarter Project Thanko Starts Selling The USB Butt Cooler Cushion (Ver. 2) → Read More
Viralheat, the social media measurement tool that allows content producers to monitor consumer-generated content on the Web in realtime, announced today that it has closed a $4.25 million series A round of funding. The round was led by the venture firm Mayfield Fund and adds to the $75K of seed capital Viralheat raised back in December 2009. The startup plans to use this new infusion of capital to expand its engineering team, create new products and services for consumer analytics and engagement, and accelerate customer acquisition and revenue growth. → Read More
“The future is the web.” So goes the mantra that seems to be echoing throughout Google, Facebook, and plenty of smaller tech companies that view the web as the solution to sidestep the fragmentation created by native app platforms. And they’re almost certainly right.
But the web still has a long way to go — it’s quite rare to come across web applications that feel anything like their desktop counterparts. Now San Diego-based startup OpenCandy thinks it has a solution: a new product called Pokki that bridges the gap between the browser and native applications. In other words, they’re offering web apps that are a lot more convenient than web apps. → Read More
Poggled, the daily deals service that boasts Groupon investors Eric Lefkosky, Brad Keywell and NEA as backers, is expanding to other cities today, first on the list being New York and Denver.
Poggled is an interesting take on the daily deals model, with 50-70% off “evergreen” services at nightclubs, bars and music venues available every day without daily expiration. Users can search for deals on its iPhone and Android apps by filtering by Nearby, Happening Now or by Day of The Week, Event Type or Neighborhood. Users can also share their deal (and likely alcohol) consumption habits on Facebook and Twitter. → Read More
When you’re in fifth place in the browser races, there’s room to be a little goofy. That’s why it can be a pleasure to read the releases coming from Opera Software, the quirky Oslo-based company responsible for the eponymous Opera browser — the underdog currently enjoying a 2.4 percent share of the browser market behind IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. → Read More
HP’s webOS tablet, the TouchPad, doesn’t officially hit until July 1st, but that hasn’t stopped some of the big retailers from putting their demo units out for the public to fondle. Sure, you could just watch the official demo videos, but nothing beats actually seeing something in action. Or seeing someone else see it in action, as in this YouTube video taken at a Kansas Wal-Mart. No sign of that 7-inch version we heard about, though. Anyway, keep your eyes open come July: we’ll have a full review up as soon as we’re reasonably sure we know what to think of the thing. [via Engadget] → Read More
Last winter, Singapore-based Bitsmedia launched a new app into the marketplace called Frenzapp that enables users to share their favorite iPhone apps with friends, joining a cluster of services taking on Apple’s Genius in the attempt to make app recommendations even better.
Yet, with a competition from other app-recommendation startups, like Chomp, Appsfire, Discovr, Zwapp, Explor, and more, Bitsmedia made a smart strategic decision and decided to diversify by bringing Frenzapp to music with a new app called, you guessed it, Frenzapp Music. The music app, which recently went live on iTunes, attacks the social aspect of music discovery by enabling its users to share their favorite music on Facebook and Twitter, allowing users to post status updates to social networks or scroll through a realtime feed of the music their friends are liking, listening to, and listing as “favorites” — and more. → Read More
This morning, we got tipped to check out wdyl.com. The tipster noted that it was apparently a new Google site attempting to “create a unified UI to search in multiple channels”. Sure enough, visiting the URL brought up a Google page — but it was a 404 page. Turns out it needs the “www” in order to work. Yes, wdyl.com is not quite ready for prime-time. But it is out there, live!
The new service, which Google apparently did launch this morning, is called What do you love? (hence, wdyl.com). While it seems to be more of a cute gimmick at this time, the idea is to return users a single page of relevant results across many of Google’s products for whatever query is typed into the wdyl search box. The “search” button is even a heart. Cute. → Read More
The hacktivist group Anonymous may be setting its sights on the city of Orlando, Florida next, if an anonymous press release which has landed in our inbox is to be believed (see bellow). The group is threatening to take down a different city-related website every day, starting with Orlando Florida Guide, which doesn’t even appear to be owned by the city of Orlando (it is registered to an organization called Utopia, administered by a man named Steven Ridenour). So any random website extolling the virtues of Orlando could be targeted.
The DDOS attacks are justified in the press release as retaliation for the repeated arrests of members of a non-profit group called Food Not Bombs, which feeds homeless people in a park without a permit. The leader of the group, Keith McHenry, was also recently arrested. “This is a declaration of war,” writes Anonymous in its press release describing “Operation Orlando.” → Read More
Last month saw the introduction of a new Sandy Bridge-enabled S series from Sony, and now we see their more powerful, full-on Z series get a boost. The new Zs have a standard (not low-voltage) Core i7, 256GB SSD, and a 13.1″ screen at 1600×900 (interesting resolution!). They tip the scale at just over 2.6 pounds and are 16.65mm thick, with a “full-flat” body, though the significance of that term isn’t really explained.
Perhaps most interesting is the combination Light Peak and USB port on the side there. Is it Light Peak? Is it USB? Is it Thunderbolt? Let’s apply our critical thinking skills! → Read More
When you think of wireless networks, you generally think either of a personal wi-fi network like that at your house or a cafe, or the cellular networks that power our phones. Both these are consumer networks, intended for delivering things like media and instantaneous communication. But not every network has the same needs. On-Ramp Wireless intends to empower a new kind of network, one that covers thousands of square miles with just a few dozen nodes. The trade-off? Bandwidth. → Read More
We knew that the T-Mobile MyTouch 4G Slide was on the way — or, at least, we had a pretty darn good reason to believe as much. Sure enough, it’s the real deal: ol’ Magenta has just painted it up with a proper press release, announcing that it’ll it the stores sometime in July for an as-of-yet-undisclosed price. T-Mobile’s decided to take a somewhat rarely taken route with the marketing behind this one. Rather than playing up the 1.2 Ghz processor, the “4G” connectivity (with “4G” in quotes, of course, because T-Mobile’s 4G is arguably not actual 4G), or the 3.7″ WVGA (800×480) SuperLCD display, they’re pointing all of their hype machine’s energy at a different component: the camera. → Read More
These concept cameras, or whatever they are, probably aren’t indicative of any future Nikon products, but it’s always fun to see what imaging companies have cooking deep in the labs. French Nikon site Nikon Hub caught a few at Paris’s Cité des Sciences et Industrie over the weekend. There sure as hell isn’t a lot of info, but I like the modular idea of that first one. [via Nikon Rumors] → Read More
So it looks like a pita pocket. So what? If you’ve got a nice little wireless mouse for on-the-go gaming or productivity and don’t want it clattering around your bag, this thing sounds great. And it turns into a tiny mousepad! How can you say no? How, I ask you? Only $15 at Smartfish. Get one, even though it looks like robot food. → Read More
While Samsung’s sexy little Series 5 Chromebook is already shipping, a lot of people (“the people” meaning “people interested in Chrome OS,” which probably isn’t that many people right now) are probably waiting for the cheaper AC700 from Acer. You can pre-order one now, of course, but shipping date was pretty much a mystery… until now. → Read More
The All -Terrain Roomba isn’t brand new but recent updates have made it a formidable opponent to stairs, lumps of dirt, and other obstacles that stand between you and a completely clean Martian surface. The DIY kit uses a modded Roomba and unique chassis to offer stability and impressive speed to this little robot. → Read More
If you’ve ever wondered why they can’t take these tiny SSD units and just pack ‘em into a thumbdrive case, this one’s for you. The new RC8 from Super Talent is in every way a real SSD, except perhaps that it’s not sitting in your PC’s case with a SATA connection. This one’s USB 3.0 and it appears to really cruise. We’re looking at over 200MB/s reads and writes. → Read More
The world has been waiting for an official Facebook tablet app, and waiting, and waiting. But that app may not appear on the iPad first (although Facebook is working on an iPad app for sure). Instead, Facebook’s first tablet app will appear on the HP TouchPad, which comes out this Friday and runs the WebOS it bought with Palm. Unless the iPad app also launches this week, the TouchPad will become the first tablet with an official Facebook app. Given the tension between Apple and Facebook, a concurrent launch on the iPad seems unlikely. Update: Facebook has reached out to clarify that “this app was not built by Facebook but by HP.”
How do I know? I got my hands on some screenshots of the Facebook app for the TouchPad. You can see them here. But what I wonder is if this is also what the app will look like on the iPad. All I can say for sure is that these pics are from Facebook’s tablet app running on WebOS. → Read More
We’ve confirmed the rumors of Myspace layoffs with our own inside source; From what I’m hearing the company expects to lay off at least 150 of its around 400 employees tomorrow (37.5% of its staff). According to the source, another group of around 150 employees will be put on a transition plan, where they will still be laid off but can work with pay for a few weeks while they search for another job.
Myspace cut around 47% of its staff back in January and these new layoffs come as Myspace is preparing itself for a sale, which we’re hearing will be signed tomorrow and announced on Friday. While there are multiple rumors circling regarding who exactly will be buying the beleaguered social network, the names being tossed around include a bidding group fronted by Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, Buzzmedia, and even LivingSocial. → Read More
Last month, founder David Karp noted that Tumblr was now seeing over 250 million pageviews a day. As we noted, that was incredible since as recently as July of 2009, they were seeing 250 million pageviews for the entire month. But it turns out that the numbers are much more incredible than they first appeared.
I noticed this when Tumblr President John Maloney posted earlier today that Tumblr was now doing north of 8.4 billion monthly pageviews. That number was around 7 billion just a month ago, and when I drilled down into Tumblr’s publicly available numbers on Quantcast, I noticed a massive surge in pageviews in the last few weeks. So massive, in fact, that the data looks more like a solar flare. → Read More
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