The US Supreme Court just ruled on Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (formerly Schwarzenegger v. EMA) and deemed a 2005 California law unconstitutional, which prohibited the sale of violent video games to minors. Simply put, California cannot ban the rental or sale of violent video games to children. This was previously banned by the 2005 law introduced by State Senitor Leland Yee and punished offending retailers with a $1,000 fine for each infraction.
The SCOTUS ruled in a 7-2 vote that the law was unconstitutional. → Read More
KashFlow, the UK startup that competes with the likes of Sage with its cloud-based accounting software for SMEs, is today widening the net: It’s launched a fully re-branded white-label offering aimed at organisations that have existing SME customers and want to get in on the cloud-based action but don’t have the resources or inclination to build their own service.
At first glance this may look like little more than a glorified affiliate type deal but with the lack of self-sign up at KashFlow’s new OEMAccounts.com site and a negotiable revenue share, it’s perhaps more a sign of intent as the company beds down on its growth trajectory minus the ‘strategic investor’ that it recently set out to find. → Read More
Another day, another unfortunate piece of news out of Groupon’s international operations. Today it’s that SoSata, Groupon’s Indian site, got hacked. In a letter to users, Groupon encouraged them to change user names and passwords and assured them no financial information was compromised because none is stored on the site. Compared to the flood of angry headlines about Groupon of late, this is nothing.
But the minor blight comes on the same day that the number two daily deals site in the US, Living Social, is also getting more serious about international expansion. The company has acquired three small daily deals sites: DealKeren of Indonesia, its parent company Ensogo which operates in Thailand and the Philippines and GoNabit which operates in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Lebanon, Jordan and Kuwait. Living Social also announced it’s offering daily deals in the Netherlands. This brings LivingSocial’s global reach to 21 countries.
Assuming Living Social has been watching Groupon carefully, it may be able to avoid making the same costly international Groupon made gobbling up sites in far flung parts of the world. That could give Living Social, long seen as the daily deal also-ran, its best opportunity to go head-to-head with the soon-to-be-public market leader. → Read More
TVs with integrated HDDs and Blu-recorders are nothing new anymore, but Mitsubishi Electric is trying to score with a specific selling point: its compact design. Their REAL LCD-22BLR500, announced [JP] today, is an all-in-one device that houses a 22-inch screen, a 500GB HDD, and a Blu-ray recorder with AVREC support. → Read More
As if it was planned this way, GM just introduced the 2012 Transformers Special Edition Camaro days before the new Dark of the Moon hits theaters. This special edition RS is done up Bumblebee style, complete with the black on yellow color scheme, 20-inch black wheels (yum), and, of course, an Autobot shield logo. So yeah, it’s just like the original Transformer’s Camaro but with a slightly different kit to celebrate the latest Transformer movie. Buyers can order the $3,000 kit this coming July with shipping expected for September. → Read More
The iOS hacking world is full of all kinds of crazy terms and phrases. “Cydia”. “DFU Mode”. “Saving your blobs.” That last one — the blob one — is a particularly important idea for those on the cutting edge of the jailbreak scene. To break down the concept as simply as I can: by saving a record of a few chunks of data (the SHSH “blob”) uniquely generated for your iPhone during a firmware upgrade, you can later downgrade (read: go back to) that firmware without iTunes throwing a hissy fit. Be it that you ever accidentally update to a build that just doesn’t seem to be jailbreakable, you can return to one that is. With iOS 5, however, this process seems to be on the way out. → Read More
A new Pew research survey of U.S. adults conducted in May, 2011 shows that ownership of electronic readers such as the Amazon Kindle or The Barnes & Noble Nook is now at 12 percent. The ownership of e-readers doubled from six months prior when it was 6 percent.
The adoption of e-readers continues to outpace tablets such as the iPad and Motorola Xoom. Only 8 percent of respondents said they won a tablet, compared to 5 percent six months earlier. So tablet ownership seems to be growing at a slower pace. → Read More
The world is getting a first look at Impermium, a new startup that aims to help sites fight growing user generated spam – spammy comments, hacked accounts and (my personal favorite) fraudulent registrations.
Sounds like a useful service. And the team behind it just makes it more compelling. CEO Mark Risher was known as Yahoo’s “Spam Czar” until he left in June 2010. Joining him from Yahoo are Vish Ramarao and Naveen Jamal. These guys have seen, and fought, a lot of spam over the years. → Read More
When we reported on the Nexus 4G, Google’s first Ice Cream Sandwich smartphone, we weren’t sure whether or not it would be a “pure Google” device or a handset made by one of the tech giant’s manufacturing partners. The inside source promised a “monster-sized” 720p display, a 4G radio of some kind, an an OMAP440 processor, but none of the leaked specs hinted at who would make the device.
Today, however, BGR’s source has given some new information about the handset that definitively answers our question. → Read More
In a little room underneath Basel I sit with the humble and talented Mr. Klaus Ulbrich of Temption Germany. Temption is one of those underdog watch brands that I have been rooting for, for years. I have written about their watches a lot on aBlogtoRead.com – and reviewed a few as well (such as the CGK203 and the Cameo). Which you can search for easily. This is the first time that I have actually gotten to meet Mr. Ulbrich and it is an honor to meet the man behind these watches. → Read More
We reviewed Addonics‘s first NAS adapter in early 2009, somehow missed the second version of the same, and now present our review of their NAS 3.0 Adapter. Like the previous iterations, the NAS 3.0 Adapter is an extremely small device. It sports two USB ports, an RJ-45 port, and a power socket. As with the original version, the power adapter is not a wall wart. Say what you want about Addonics products, at least they understand that consumers hate wall warts. → Read More
Three students at the University of Pennsylvania—Joseph Cohen, Dan Getelman, and Jim Grandpre—are quitting school to launch a new education startup called Coursekit, and they’ve raised $1 million in a seed round to do it. (Peter Thiel would be proud). The New York City startup just closed a seed round from Founder Collective, IA Ventures, Shasta Ventures and some angels.
Coursekit is like Facebook or Yammer for courses. Like many other students frustrated with Blackboard, the current online course management standard, the Coursekit founders think they can do a better job. “It is really a Blackboard replacement with a heavy emphasis on social networking,” says CEO Cohen. → Read More
The story goes that a seagall, the rat of the air, picked up this GoPro camera. The result? Well, just watch the video above. It’s pretty awesome. → Read More
The folks who lambasted me so roundly last year about the Notion Ink Adam are now nowhere to be found. The “fans,” Greg at NotionInkFan most notably, are quiet. NotionInkHacks is now TabletROMs, a decidedly more catholic site dedicated to general hacks. To quote Auden: Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. → Read More
As the launch of any new platform tends to do, MeeGo’s debut on the Nokia N9 last week sparked a glimmer of hope. Nokia has never been the best at making software that’s as pretty as it is powerful — but with MeeGo’s fancy animations and surprisingly well thought out UI, we walked away pleasantly surprised on almost all fronts. Maybe, just maybe, we figured, Nokia might find a way to keep MeeGo around, even as they fleshed out their new-found allegiance to Windows Phone 7. Maybe if it proved popular enough? Not gonna happen, says CEO Stephen Elop. → Read More
Everyone is trying to get pre-IPO Facebook shares any way they can. Some investors purchase shares on secondary markets like SecondMarket and SharesPost. Others broker private sales. Today, GSV Capital, a publicly traded investment management company, announced that it has purchased a small number of shares (225,000) at a price ($29.28) which would give Facebook an implied $70 billion valuation.
Although GSV Capital doesn’t say, this most likely was a private sale. Facebook passed $70 billion on the secondary markets in January, and hit $85 billion in March.
It’s such a small number of shares and a single trade, so you can’t make any generalizations about the implied market valuation of Facebook. What’s more interesting is what the trade did for GSV’s stock. It is trading up 21 percent this morning at $12.45. → Read More
A new start-up has popped up out of Tel Aviv called SearchBBM, and it could save BlackBerry users a few bucks on their SMS bill each month. Basically, SearchBBM lets you find other BBM users through Facebook, Twitter, or through their username. → Read More
AFCV Holdings, a portfolio company of growth equity investor Summit Partners, is axing the majority of people working for Q&A site Answers.com parent company Answers Corporation, which it acquired earlier this year for $127 million in cash.
According to Israeli business paper Calcalist, 45 out of 65 employees in the company’s offices in Israel were fired, including founder and CEO Bob Rosenschein and CTO Jeff Schneiderman. Another 25 employees or so work out of the United States, but it remains unclear if all of them have also been given a pink slip. → Read More
Boingo Wireless is expanding its reach to the skies today with a new partnership with Gogo, a company that powers wireless internet connectivity on airplanes. With the new partnership, Boingo customers can now log in to Gogo using their existing Boingo account (as opposed to using or creating a Gogo account).
Boingo says that this Gogo internet access includes more than 1,100 planes. No on the Gogo home pages, users will be able to choose Boingo as their provider and log in with their existing Boingo username and password. Users who have Boingo’s Wi-Finder app can also log-in to Gogo as well by accepting the flight segment charge and entering a CAPTCHA validation phrase. → Read More
Glasses-free 3D should be like water, or air: everyone should have access to it. For a couple days, we in the U.S. have been exclusively lucky in that one of the best (if not the best) Android phones of this year launched with us first. If you haven’t guessed yet, I’m talking about the HTC Evo 3D. Fortunately for those in Europe who have suddenly turned green with envy, the wait is coming to a close. HTC announced this morning plans to launch its power-packing HTC EVO 3D across Europe in July. → Read More
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