Apparently not all Thunderbolt ports are created equally. Anadtech discovered that the Thunderbolt chip within the latest MacBook Air is not the same found in the current MacBook Pro. The Air’s version packs less power and throughput resulting in less abilities. Hope you weren’t planning on hooking up two of those new fancy Thunderbolt Displays. → Read More
With HD video recording, great image quality, and a solid selection of lenses, the Nikon D5100 and Canon T3i are on the top of a lot of wish lists out there. For people already in the Canon or Nikon camp (full disclosure: I’m a Canon man), the choice is obvious if an upgrade is in their future, but for the less dogmatic and new recruits to the DSLR crowd, it’s not nearly as clear-cut. $800 buys you a lot of camera either way.
Pixel peepers will want to check out the reliable and exhaustive reviews at DP Review (here and here) and other photography-centric sites where systematic checks on image quality are conducted, but I wanted to just put these two worthy devices head to head and see not just how they compare technically but in everyday use. → Read More
Sony’s Qriocity service isn’t exactly a stranger to the mobile space — its Music Unlimited app launched in the Android Market just last month — but astute users know this is only half of what Qriocity really has to offer.
Their video-on-demand component sees a lot of action across the Sony ecosystem, with footholds on the PS3, PSP, and web-connected Bravia televisions. The question, then, is if will we ever see that service make the same mobile shift that Qriocity’s music offerings have.
According to a post on Sony Ericsson’s Product Blog, the answer is yes, and soon! → Read More
Looks like things are going well over in Taiwan, as HTC has reported record-breaking Q2 results this morning. In fact, the company sold 12.1 million units in the second quarter totaling a 123.7 percent year-over-year growth rate. After Q2 taxes, that brings YOY growth to 102.9 percent.
If you aren’t good with percentages, that’s huge. In terms of quarterly growth, HTC is up 24.8 percent from the first quarter. → Read More
In Japan, a multiple-megabit Internet connection costs pennies. I pay $99 for 50-mbps (and that’s really about 1 mbps (when it’s not raining) in Brooklyn. But why, you ask? Well, to hear cable companies (and carriers) tell it, it costs a pretty penny to get all that data to your door. Providers have to lease connectivity from the backbone and, as such, they’re forced to add caps to prevent us users from sucking down too much data and bankrupting them. But Mr. Cringeley, in an excellent examination of the real bandwidth costs in America, proves them wrong.
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Anybody notice something missing from Samsung’s Q2 results? Hint: it was the phone/tablet sales data. But why? Well, according to Samsung’s “new information policy,” phones and tablets data will henceforth remain a secret.
“As competition intensifies, there are increased risks that the information we provide may adversely affect our own business,” said Samsung’s investor relations boss Robert Yi on the Q2 conference call. → Read More
IT software giant CA Technologies has acquired website monitoring startup WatchMouse. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
WatchMouse product tests the availability of websites, services and applications and monitors the performance and security of sites by simulating regular visits from its monitoring network of 60 stations in more than 40 countries. WatchMouse will tell a you if visitors can reach your site, if the basic interactions and click paths work, and whether they do so within the clients performance limits. → Read More
This is Roku’s third media streamer lineup. The UI isn’t that much different from past models nor are the capabilities. We’ve used and reviewed almost all of the Roku products, from their first Netflix box, so we’ll keep this short and sweet. This Roku series ushers the media streamer into casual gaming thanks to motion controls and Angry Birds. Yep, yet another Angry Birds incarnation. → Read More
The Dell Streak 10, whose cousins we reviewed here and here, is a 10-inch Honeycomb tablet that Dell is releasing in China this week. However, the interesting thing about this image is that the Dell Streak 10 and the Dell Streak 7 are both running Honeycomb, a welcome relief for those saddled with the Streak’s outdated OS. → Read More
Seattle-based PressOK Entertainment, a game development company, launched an interesting new service this week in public beta called PlacePlay, which the startup describes as a “location enablement platform” for games. Location is something that hasn’t really been explored much in gaming as of yet, so simply put, PlacePlay aims to tackle the obstacles that prevent location from becoming a relevant facet of the games we play every day.
For starters, the platform is focused on giving game developers the ability to quickly add local tournaments into gameplay, so that a user can, for example, play a virtual game of Battleship with other players that live on the same block. Though tournaments are the primary feature of the platform at this point, PlacePlay also supports location-based virtual goods, objects, achievements, and more. → Read More
In the old days, you used to have to put something called “optical media” into a “DVD drive” to install software and operating systems. Those days are long over thanks to an odd little USB key called the Isostick.
Although the project doesn’t officially exist – it’s almost funded on Kickstarter – the IsoStick promises to allow you to load any ISO disk image from any computer just as if it were loading it from an optical disk. Why would you want to do this? Well, some computers can’t boot directly from a USB thumbdrive and the IsoStick solves this by masquerading as an optical drive first and a thumb drive second. Almost any PC will boot from an optical disk, which makes the Isostick so useful. → Read More
Pixeet is a full, floor-to-ceiling panorama lens that works with almost any phone. It currently only supports iPhone but it will soon support Android and Blackberry devices as well.
How does it work? Well, you stick the lens right on the device and scan the room or space from left to right. The aluminum and glass lens picks up a full 360-degree panorama and then lets you post it to Pixeet’s own servers. → Read More
Enjoy a selection of recent stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: → Read More
Yesterday we wrote about “EJ,” a woman who had her San Francisco apartment burglarized and vandalized by someone who rented her home for a week via Airbnb.
There was some confusion about how Airbnb was and is dealing with the situation. See the updates to that post above, and CEO Brian Chesky’s post here on TechCrunch later yesterday talking about the situation.
The event happened, which is a terrible blow to the company’s reputation. The confusion seems to be around whether or not Airbnb will compensate her for her losses. The company at first said no, then said yes, and clarified that they made the offer last month when it happened, not in response to the PR storm yesterday. → Read More
Have you noticed an uptick in the number of Tweets that mention Spotify, Turntable.fm or other music services lately? It’s all part of their diabolical plans. Online music services live or die by word of mouth, which is why most of them have hooks into Twitter and Facebook for users to share invites and the songs they are listening to. But which ones are winning the battle of the music tweets?
Social media analytics company Simply Measured looked at a one week sample of tweets linking to one of three music services: Spotify, Turntable.fm, and Pandora. → Read More
If you haven’t heard of PIE, it’s probably because you don’t live in the Pacific Northwest. But the Portland Incubator Experiment has already amassed such an impressive roster of startups that everyone may know about them soon enough. Recognizing that, Google is getting out in front and partnering up.
Google joins Coca-Cola, Target, Nike, and Wieden+Kennedy (the largest privately-held advertising and communications company in the world) in helping out PIE. Like many of those companies, they’ll provide 5 mentors (from Google, YouTube, Google Ventures, Android, etc) to the incubator that will help the startups associated with the program. → Read More
Two days ago, Toshiba-Fujtsu in Japan took the wraps of the IS12T, the world’s first world’s first phone running Windows Phone 7.5 (aka Mango). We were quick in giving you the first specs, but we now have a video that shows the 1 Ghz Qualcomm CPU-powered device in action – plus some more detailed specs. → Read More
We’ve taken some of the biggest news stories of the week and put them together for you in TechCrunched.
On the heels of recent management changes at Twitter, the company is now changing the way brands interact with users. Follow a brand you like and you’ll see their ads pop up in your Twitter stream. Over in the travel space, Airbnb experienced the best and worst of the business world, while back online the code for Facebook’s iPad app was found in an unlikely place. And finally, lots of people are checking out Android phones—but not necessarily keeping them.
Watch the show and click on the below links for additional details. → Read More
The heated battle between two of the biggest email services on the web has taken a decidedly humorous turn.
Yesterday Google unveiled Email Intervention, a site “built by a few folks from the Gmail team” that encourages users to get their friends to switch from draconian email systems and their “embarrassingly outdated addresses” over to Google’s service, which features such niceties as free phone calls and video chat. The site taps into the power of peer pressure, prompting you to send one of three pre-written letters to your friends that are still stuck in the past — and you can include a custom video if you really want to get on their case.
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