William Shatner, rejoice! Earlier today, Wen-Ai Yu from the Google+ team announced with a post on Google+ and an accompanying YouTube video that the social network now boasts ‘verification badges’ for celebrities, public figures, but also people who have been added to an (undefined) ‘large’ number of Circles, with the promise to expand the verified profile system in the near future.
This is in… → Read More
Wow. The day after HP announces they’re discontinuing all their webOS devices, and they’ve already issued a liquidation order. Best Buy, Future Shop, The Source, London Drugs, and Staples will be selling the 16GB TouchPad for $100, and the 32GB version for $150 starting tomorrow. Well, in Canada at least. → Read More
It’s hard to believe that Google’s Street View has been in use for over four years. What’s more amazing, perhaps, given the rate at which they have canvassed the world’s streets and alleyways, that there is anywhere left unmapped. But while their teams have successfully traced the surfaces of most large cities and a number of other interesting areas, I suppose it won’t come as a surprise that the… → Read More
Snapsort, until today known a popular camera recommendation site, has raised $500K from undisclosed investors to expand its algorithmic product recommendation technology to other verticals, starting with cars at Carsort.com and phones at Geekaphone.com. → Read More
Every once in a while you see an invention that seems a long time coming. The Tacit, a hand-mounted system that pings surroundings and transmits distance information to the user, is one of those. While the reliable white cane and occasional accommodations for the blind and vision impaired ameliorate the difficulty of navigating the world sans sight, technological advances that are both useful and… → Read More
Anyone who’s spent a late night hour or three browsing movie trailers on trailers.apple.com will understand the utility of the Can’t Wait iPhone app. Co-founders Eric Florenzano and Eric Maguire tell me that the app’s closest competitor is trailers.apple.com itself — and that the only way to track the updates on that site is via its RSS feed.
Can’t Wait is a slick mobile movie trailer player… → Read More
I was sitting outside a cafe the other day when an older man sat down next to me and attempted to assemble a flashlight he’d bought at Walgreens. It was the chintziest piece of garbage I’ve seen in a long time, and I had to help him put together this thing, which after some tinkering finally emitted a feeble glow. He wanted something to keep in his car just in case. I wouldn’t trust that junk… → Read More
Apple is making a lot of big changes to its mobile operating system with iOS 5, which is dribbling out in betas for developers ahead of a general release later this year. But there is one big change some developers are just starting to take notice of that Apple isn’t talking about that much. In a recent update to the documentation for iOS 5 (which is only available to registered Apple developers… → Read More
“We welcome the news of today’s acquisition, which demonstrates that Google is deeply committed to defending Android, its partners, and the entire ecosystem.”
That was Peter Chou’s line from right after the Google-Motorola deal was announced, and it would appear he’s sticking to it. Today, the HTC CEO has announced his intention to stick it out with Google and Android in spite of the… → Read More
One of the more exciting technologies on the horizon is NFC, short for Near Field Communication. You’ve probably heard quite a bit about the technology already: it’ll let you pay for things simply by tapping your phone against special sensors, and it’s already been integrated into the Nexus S — with a slew of NFC-equipped Android devices on the way (iPhone support has been long rumored, but it… → Read More
Yes yes I know Facebook Questions pivoted into some kind of “poll your friends” thing back in March but still this is sort of funny, simply because it’s the most symbolic concession of the Q&A space I’ve seen from Facebook yet. Hey, people interested in interning at Facebook, ask a question about it, ON QUORA. → Read More
Twitter has just released Bootstrap, a new toolkit to build web apps using CSS. It includes base CSS styles for typography, forms, buttons, tables, grids, navigation, alerts, and more. You can access Bootstrap on GitHub here.
Twitter says that Bootstrap was launched as a way to provide a consistent framework for the front end of individual applications. The toolkit was originally developed… → Read More
If you can’t wait for the official Steve Jobs biography, why not pick up a fake one for $8? “Translated” by someone apparently named “John Cage” (presumably there are 4.33 pages blank near the middle), the book has sold 4,000 copies at $10 a pop. → Read More
Almost every single keynote at LinuxCon, and certainly every private conversation I had with folks here, involved “cloud” in some way. As Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst observed in his keynote, there’s no single definition of “cloud”. There’s no doubt that Amazon has really pioneered the default cloud offering, but there’s a lot of work going on to build better, more robust, and more open cloud… → Read More
Well, this is something new. Here in the tech world, we hear about delay after delay — but very rarely does a company step out and say: “Hey! We’re ahead of schedule!”
Today, Microsoft was that company, and the product was Windows Phone 7 Mango. → Read More
This cool Kickstarter allows you to build a working speaker using plasma energy. It’s a little esoteric, but here’s the deal: this is a little kit that contains everything you need to play music using a plasma arc. If that doesn’t seem like your idea of a good time, you might be reading the wrong post. → Read More
We like to mix things up onstage at Disrupt SF, which is only a month away so get your early bird tickets now. One session I am really excited will be on lean startups with Eric Ries on the day he will release his book, The Lean Startup (you can watch a video I recently did with Ries on the topic). The Lean Startup movement is picking up steam, and not just among startups, so we decided to bring… → Read More
It’s that time again! Right on schedule (with “on schedule” meaning “roughly 2 weeks since the last one”), Apple has just released the sixth Beta build of iOS 5 to developers.
You know what that means: developers, get to updating (Remember: OTA updates work now!) Non-developers pretending to be developers, carry on (Just don’t be a jerk and go reviewing applications.) And everyone else? Be… → Read More
Apple has again submitted what the blogosphere is calling “inaccurate evidence” in its case against Samsung. A photo found on page 77 of Apple’s complaint to the Hague district court in the Netherlands shows the Samsung Galaxy S next to the iPhone 3G. And guess what! Apple screwed with the dimensions once again.
But don’t freak out. This may not be as big of a deal as everyone’s… → Read More
Chris Dixon begins this episode of Founder Stories with DoubleClick and FindTheBest Co-founder Kevin O’Conner by telling O’Connor that “DoubleClick is probably the closest thing New York has to a PayPal.” Meaning the two companies share an aptitude for hiring employees that go on to start innovative businesses. Just as Paypal spawned Yelp, YouTube, and LinkedIn, DoubleClick spawned… → Read More
We just announced a couple more speakers who will be joining us onstage at Disrupt SF, which is only one month away! You can follow along with the growing list of speakers here. Disrupt SF is going to be packed with all-star guests, speakers, insightful discussions, after parties and much more. It’s going to be held at the San Francisco Design Center Concourse, with after parties at Roe and … → Read More
Blogging software WordPress is announcing a number of impressive growth stats today. WordPress is now powering 14.7% of the top million websites in the world, up from 8.5%. And 22 out of every 100 new active domains in the US are running WordPress. These stats apply to both WordPress.com and WordPress.org sites.
You can also check out Founder Matt Mullenweg’s ‘State of the Word’ adress at … → Read More
With a name like Pineapple and a trade dress that looks like an iPod Nano with the clip cut off, you can tell the gents behind Pineapple watches aren’t very well-versed on trademark law. But lets, for a moment, pretend it won’t be a problem.
These watches come in seven colors and guys are inexplicably taking pre-orders on Paypal. Why they don’t use Kickstarter is beyond me. However, the styling… → Read More
As I write this, I’m sitting in my office. Around me, there are nine computers — seven of them run Windows. I have three slates, too — only one is an iPad. Welcome to the Post-PC world outside of San Francisco where Microsoft is still top dog and Apple is a niche, but admittedly, influential player.
We may be in the post-PC era, but the Windows PC is far from dead. Apple is growing rapidly… → Read More
The cost of patents is going up, and that is not a good thing. After all, Google is paying $12.5 billion for Motorola largely for its huge mobile patent portfolio. In July, an anti-Google consortium ponied up $4.5 billion Nortel’s patents (and they overpayed). Interdigital, Kodak, and others are looking to sell their patent portfolios. We are in the middle of a patent bubble.
If you think… → Read More
I hope you’re not eating anything because you’re about to see some real Jame Gumb stuff in a second. Vibram, famous makers of Sergey’s crazy monkey shoes (that I actually wear while running, much to my wife’s chagrin), have released two new models, the acceptably styled Trek LS, a lace up trail shoe/sneaker, and the absolutely abhorrent (yet strangely alluring) Bormio boots.
BirthdayShoes has… → Read More
Facebook advertising is exploding, with ad spend on the network expected to hit $4 billion in 2011. Clearly, brands and companies are flocking to Facebook to reach users. And startups like GraphEffect are trying to help advertisers serve in more-highly targeted advertising on network. Today, GraphEffect, which is backed by Founder Collective, Lerer Ventures, and others, is launching its… → Read More
Not long after Clearwire announced their intent to begin lighting up a 4G LTE network, Sprint and a cabal of cable companies have begun to discuss the idea of a possible Clearwire acquisition.
Last we heard, Clearwire was waiting on $600 million in additional funding before any work on their LTE rollout could begin. Comcast, Time Warner, and Bright House are currently in talks with the nation’s… → Read More
Amazon has obtained a dozen new domain names related to its cloud video service, including things like “instantcloudvideo.com,” “amazoncloudvideo.com,” and “primevideocloud.com,” to name just a few. The domains were registered one day prior to the company’s big announcement that its on-demand video library had reached the 100K mark, with 9,000 titles available for streaming at no extra charge… → Read More
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