Location-based service Loopt is getting some nice promotion for the next three months, courtesy of San Francisco’s International Airport and Virgin America. And it might make your trip to the airport a bit less expensive.
Beginning this week, travelers going through SFO’s new Terminal 2 will be able to check-in on Loopt to receive an offer from one of six businesses located within the terminal, including Kiehl’s and Natalie’s Candy Jar — as well as hefty discounts from Virgin America itself. The difference between this and most other check-in based offers is that the deal you receive is chosen randomly from one of these merchants (you just need to check-in at Terminal 2).
The promotion is being coordinated by Virgin America and Loopt, but travelers flying on American (which is also based in Terminal 2 at SFO) will be able to score the check-in deals as well. → Read More
Toshiba’s entrance into the Android tablet market was a pretty good one — Android 3.1 Honeycomb, a wide array of connectivity ports, and interchangeable batteries. But all those ports coupled with a 10-inch form factor made for quite the hefty slate.
Personally, I tend to favor the 7 to 8-inch tablet category, which is why I was so pleased to get a peek at Toshiba’s latest tab: The Thrive 7″. → Read More
Since 2008 we’ve been covering the gradual emergence of a cluster of technology startups in East London. Hell, we’ve even made films about so-called Silicon Roundabout. But it wasn’t until the Prime Minister suddenly appeared in the area to declare it a focus for government policy that larger tech companies started to take notice of what some random policy advisor decided to brand “Tech City“. Since then there has been a litany of pledges pledged by corporates like Cisco, BT and Facebook to keep Number 10 Downing Street happy, but not a huge amount of, well, action. All that changes today with the news that Google is to rent, lock stock and barrel, for the next ten years, an entire seven-floor building in the area. → Read More
This month marks the 20th anniversary of Microsoft Research, perhaps the most consistently interesting division of the hulking software company. Take a few minutes to peruse the timeline of their work, which ranges from consumer-facing work like Cleartype and spam recognition to the obscure, academic, and quixotic. The names behind the ideas are unlikely to be recognized, but they include geniuses, visionaries, knights, and humanitarians. Billions of dollars per year being expended towards furthering the reach and worth of technology constitutes an important but largely thankless endeavor.
Sure, products like Office, Exchange, and other enterprise stuff make up the majority of Microsoft’s income, but I don’t think Microsoft was founded to be a office-tools company. The vision of Microsoft was putting a computer in every home and making that computer as versatile and powerful as possible. Microsoft Research is perhaps more in line with that philosophy than its parent company has been in years. → Read More
Facebook has their sights locked on mobile. We know that. This afternoon at GigaOm’s Mobilize conference, Facebook Mobile Chief Erick Tseng touched on just how crucial mobile is to them — and more importantly, how crucial it will be.
Just how crucial are we talking about? Within 1-2 years, Tseng sees Facebook becoming as much of a mobile company as it is a desktop/web company. → Read More
The battle between Apple and HTC (and Android in general) is getting fiercer.
The United States International Trade Commission has just announced that it’s instituting an investigation into Apple, based on a complaint that HTC brought against it earlier this month. Apple and HTC have been battling over patent infringement since Apple first filed suit in March 2010 — and up until recently HTC has been playing defense. Now it looks like it may be Apple’s turn.
To be clear, the ITC announcement says that the merits of the case have not yet been established. But if the ITC does eventually find that Apple has infringed on HTC’s patents, it could impact many of Apple’s products — the investigation spans “computers, tablet computers, and smartphones”. → Read More
“This makes me happy on a lot of levels,” says Facebook Product manager Sam Lessin, about this Mad Men homage to Facebook’s recently unveiled profile Timeline. Aside from founding (and selling) Drop.io to Facebook, Lessin was primarily responsible for the look and feel of Facebook Timeline, and has a right to be happy, after all, it could have ended up looking like this. → Read More
If you’ve been in photography for more than ten years, you probably remember the way things used to be on old film cameras. There was no electronic interconnect between the lens and the body, so lens-related functions (focus, zoom, aperture) were on the lens and body-related functions (ASA, shutter speed) were on the body. That changed as autofocus and auto-exposure, particularly on digital cameras, necessitated a data connection between the lens and the body. While we never did away with the focus and zoom rings, aperture went right out the window and was electronically controlled.
A few nice cameras have aperture rings now — the X100, for instance — but generally speaking you can’t find one except on professional cinema gear these days. But Canon may be looking to change that. → Read More
If ever there was an audience for a silver and neon green laptop, kids would be it (and also maybe people who like lime green a lot). That said, Toshiba has just launched its updated kid-friendly laptop: the Satellite L735D.
Toshiba and Best Buy worked on this one together, and did quite a bit of research to make sure that the little ones were getting what they wanted. Which was a lot of silver and neon green. → Read More
Looks like the HD7 won’t be the only Windows Phone on T-Mobile’s shelves for much longer. Right on the heels of yesterday big smartphone announcement, T-Mobile has pulled back the curtains on the newest Windows Phone in their lineup: the HTC Radar 4G.
The Radar was one of two Windows Phones revealed at IFA by HTC, and while AT&T made sure to snag the big boy, the Radar is no slouch. It sports a rather handsome white aluminum body, while a 3.8-inch LCD display running at 800×480 graces the Radar’s front. → Read More
Kobo has been cultivating their Reading Life initiative for a while now, and with the announcement of their new Pulse feature, they’re digging even deeper into the social space than before. Slated to launch in their Kobo iOS apps first, Pulse is a new way for readers to connect with others while digitally thumbing through their collections.
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Last week, OnStar made some changes to its terms of service which were almost universally recognized as being overreaching and unnecessary. The two primary changes were, first, that OnStar would continue to track subscribers who had terminated their service. They could ask to have their data connection severed in addition to unsubscribing, but why should they have to? Second, OnStar gave itself the ability to share or sell anonymized driving data to “any third party,” “for any purpose, at any time.”
Faced with a flurry of criticism from users, sites like this one, and even Congress, OnStar has gone back on at least one of the changes. → Read More
We’ve written plenty of times about Shopkick, a geo-coupon system that has received funding from Kleiner Perkins, Greylock, SV Angel and others. Today, the company is revealing a number of impressive stats about its service.
Instead of checking in, as you would with a geo app like Foursquare or Gowalla, shopkick automatically recognizes when someone with the free Android or iPhone app on their phone walks into a store. Once a shopkick Signal is detected, the app delivers reward points called “kickbucks” to the user for walking into a retail store, trying on clothes, scanning a barcode and other actions. Kickbucks can then be redeemed across all partner stores for gift card rewards or for Facebook Credits. User can also receive special discounts on specific products at partners stores like Macy’s, Best Buy or Target. → Read More
Skype’s updated iOS app is turning out to be a bit of a mixed bag. It manages to add a few useful new features, like Bluetooth headset support and in-call video stabilization, but one addition may have some users groaning: in-app advertising. → Read More
Microsoft promised just a few days back that the Windows Phone 7.5 update (otherwise known as “Mango”, because updates need funny little names now) would roll out “sometime in the next week or two” — and sure enough, said roll out has just begun.
As for who it’s rolling out to… that’s still a bit of a mystery. → Read More
With the launch of the Kindle Fire tomorrow, I thought it would be fun to write a little bit sci-fi and imagine what the publishing market will look like in the next ten or so years. I’m a strong proponent of the ebook and, as I’ve said again and again, I love books but they’re not going to make it past this decade, at least in most of the developed world.
As we well know, ebook sales are now outpacing hardback sales and publishers are now crowing ebook numbers alongside their traditional in-store sales numbers. Soon those in-store sales numbers will dwindle and disappear simply because there will be no stores – heavy readers, the folks who buy genre fiction by the basket-full will be happy to head over to Nooks and Kindles, especially when they drop below $99 (as they will this year). → Read More
WordPress theme provider WooThemes is launching a new service today called WooCommerce, which lets users install a plugin on their WordPress site in order to turn that site into a professional e-commerce storefront. The system includes a plugin and the company’s theme library, while also offering multiple payment gateway options, settings for configuring shipping rates, coupon support, email templates, a reports panel to track sales and performance and more. → Read More
We first wrote about a service called 1000memories back in July 2010. The site was setting out to address a topic that people don’t like to talk about, but is universal all the same: when people pass away, their friends and family members like to remember them and celebrate their memories. That can be difficult though — these people are often separated by great distances, and it’s hard to share antique photos with a lot of people. So 1000memories created a service for digital memorials, where all of these friends and family members can upload their photos and share their favorite memories in a single place.
Now, over a year later, 1000memories is changing things up a bit. Don’t worry, those digital memorials are still a core feature of the site, and all of the memorials that have been created aren’t going anywhere. But the service is adjusting to better cater to the way its users are actually using it. In short, they’re making it a place to share all kinds of digital memories, not just those that concern the recent passing of a loved one.
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The latest report from mobile analytics firm Distimo examines in detail the trends surrounding the localization of mobile applications. That is, which app stores tend to have a higher or lower number of apps that are published in just one country alone.
According to its findings, globally, 27% of the most popular applications are popular exclusively in one country in Apple’s App Store for iPhone. Meanwhile, Nokia’s Ovi Store has the highest proportion of apps published in just one country (29.4%) while the App Store for iPad has the lowest (3.4%). → Read More
