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Dell Streak 10 and the Dell Streak 7 are both running Honeycomb, a welcome relief for those saddled with the Streak’s outdated OS.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.
→ Read More
KiMA Ventures has made a small $150,000 investment in Tap2print, a global ‘In-App Printing Service’ for mobile applications that makes print product ordering possible from any mobile app worldwide. Clearly there are a lot of photos out there unprinted.
The idea is that developers download Tap2print’s ‘In-App Printing Service’ SDK and hit its developers portal. This allows access to integration, testing and income status tracking. Thus, developers get to concentrate on making their app a success while Tap2print takes care of all the technical, logistical and service aspects of a worldwide print and delivery service. A “significant share of the revenue” is generated by every order. → Read More
Back at CES, we spent a long time waiting for Lady Gaga to show up (again) and introduce her new product line, a collaboration with Polaroid called Grey Label. The camera sunglasses and Bluetooth printer didn’t exactly blow our socks off, but the GL30 camera prototype sure did. It was beautiful. Of course, no matter how much I bugged Polaroid, I never got word one about availability or what have you. And then this thing turns up!
Now, I’m not convinced this is the same product we saw at CES. A relative of that product, perhaps, but not the real thing. I refuse to believe that they’d throw away a perfectly good design like that, one associated with Gaga herself. So what is this? → Read More
With the recent success of StockTwits, the market seems to be showing that there’s ample demand for a social micro-blogging service that targets stocks, trading, and financial information. Or at least that’s what Stocial is hoping. The Seattle-based startup, which is launching today in public beta, wants to be, in conception, the love child of StockTwits and Yahoo! Finance — or, said another way, Bloomberg for the people, by the people.
Essentially, Stocial wants to give its users access to realtime market data and trending stock sentiment in a virtual and “game-ified” venue. Of course, most tickers are capable of the those first two, and StockTwits has certainly shown that Twitter can be a great resource for realtime financial information. But Stocial Founder and CEO Fahad Kamr says that, with its 140-character limit, Twitter doesn’t embody the full potential for sharing stock information. → Read More
Twitter has just announced to developers that it has added a field for “possibly_sensitive” content in its streaming API, in a test that will eventually result in more granular end-user media settings.
Twitter representative Carolyn Penner tells me that this API change means that eventually when users flag their own or other users’ content as NSFW, a warning will show up before in the media details pane of the tweet informing other users of potentially sensitive content before they click-through. While the ability to flag content as sensitive has existed since Twitter launched Photos, the “sensitive content” flag on the details pane is new, Penner says. → Read More
It goes without saying that there is a great deal of activity in the tech startup world these days, whether you think it’s a bubble or not. At the same time governments all over the world are realising that with economies in dire straits, anything which shows hypergrowth like technology is to be encouraged. Little wonder then that Chile is doing StartupChile, Berlin is white hot right now and the UK government is fanning the flames under an organic tech cluster in the East of London. So what’s the one thing you don’t need in a “TechCity“? How about no basic phone lines, maybe?
We’ve already documented the delays BT Openreach is capable of when being asked, in simple terms, to connect a central London building up to a fibre broadband connection. We even put a countdown clock on them to get it sorted out.
Now word reaches us that Shutl, a company with significant VC investment and which is threatening to become one of the hottest startups in the UK is simply trying to get… a phone line. → Read More
Today, Softbank Capital is announcing a series of updates, including the launch of its redesigned website. Some of these changes have been brewing for some time now, but, hey, the redesign of its website is as good a time as any to spread the word. Over the past year and a half, Softbank has been in the process of shifting its investment strategy to one that focuses more heavily on early stage businesses. Rather than investing larger chunks in series B rounds, Softbank will be seeking to invest in seed and early series A rounds, in smaller doses, giving the firm the opportunity to invest in a greater number of companies. → Read More
We’re back with a new episode of TC Cribs, and this one is sure is sure to be a crowd pleaser: red-hot blogging platform Tumblr. The NYC-based startup has been growing like crazy (they’re now up to 11.6 billion page views per month), and they’ve given us a chance to take a peek inside their headquarters.
For a company with over $40 million in funding the Tumblr team is still surprisingly small, and the office is relatively humble. But there’s plenty of charm: handcrafted furniture, board games abound, and robots that look suspiciously like my favorite wizard.
Be sure to watch til the end, when I get to walk Tumblr founder David Karp’s dog.
→ Read More
President Obama announced back in February his support for a Wireless Innovation and Infrastructure Initiative, which he believed would (among other things) “benefit all Americans, bolster public safety, and spur innovation in wireless services, equipment, and applications.” Under his plan, 500 MHz of spectrum would be freed up over the course of the next ten years in order spur on mobile broadband expansion and the development of 4G networks. → Read More
