I’m not convinced these are discounts you’ve really been ‘waiting 364 days for’, but Apple’s Black Friday deals have gone live this morning. The prices leaked earlier, but hey.
If you were looking at buying a new Mac, iPod or the latest iPad, now’s the time, even if the discounts aren’t really that big in terms of percentages. You can also save some cash on a bunch of accessories, ranging from peripherals to iPad Smart Covers and even iTunes Gift Cards.
The iPhone gets no Black Friday love. → Read More
We have covered the one or the other Hello Kitty gadget in the past, but it’s been a while since the last notebook featuring the popular cartoon cat. But now Japan’s Mouse Computer is selling the so-called LuvBook S, [JP], an 11.6-inch laptop with Hello Kitty all over it. It has been co-developed with Hello Kitty maker Sanrio and luxury goods maker Swarovski.
Swarovski designed the body of the laptop (the Hello Kitty face and heart you see below is made of about 1,100 Swarovski stones). → Read More
Yandex, the Russian online search and advertising giant, has teamed up with Microsoft, Nokia, HTC and Samsung to become the default search engine on the latest – and upcoming – Windows Phone smartphones in Russia.
Yandex’s search engine is currently installed on Samsung’s Оmnia W, which is already on sale in Russia, as well as on Nokia’s Windows Phone-powered Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 smartphones, which will hit stores in December. → Read More
Online video is booming and the are tons of small video companies across production, advertising, distribution, and technology. Yet we have yet to see a serious attempt to roll up the industry. The reasons, I submit, boil down to egos and greed.
What is a Rollup?
Historically, large private equity firms have “rolled up” various small companies in a given market through mergers or acquisitions in order to reach economies of scale. A rollup is different than a simple merger in that it involves multiple parties, oftentimes taking place in a mature industry where growth can’t occur organically, but rather, through financial engineering or cost cutting.
This is partially why we haven’t seen that many rollups of Internet companies, because usually a merger is all it takes to reach considerable market dominance. Sometimes rollups make sense because building a product or business would take too long to build internally and grow organically. Ask Jeeves bought Interactive Search Holdings for $343M in March 2004 to double market share and then sold to IAC a year later for $1.8 billion. → Read More
I recently hit Bucharest in Romania to experience the rising star event of the Central and Eastern European scene, HowToWeb. This annual conference is doing an amazing job of bringing CEE entrepreneurs together, and Bucharest is gradually emerging as one of the key tech hubs in the region. The reason? It’s pretty simple – there is great engineering talent, plenty of it (there are 22 million Romanians) and it’s affordable. I could of course name any other number of cities that fit this profile – Kiev, Ljubljana, Sofia, Warsaw and more – but at the moment HowToWeb is bringing many startups and entrepreneurs in from the region to network and party, and mashing them up with international speakers such as Mark Randall of Adobe, Michael Breidenbruecker, founder of Last.fm and RjDj and Pablos Holman of Intellectual Ventures Lab. → Read More
Q: Dad, what browser do you use? A: One that browses well. Q: Okay, what’s it called? A: A browser.
I don’t know about you, but I try to avoid technological discussions with my parents. Even though they are relatively tech aware, they tend to be Team Windows and I am Team Mac. Also: While the “My cool grandma owns an iPad” trope is totally ubiquitous and real, older people tend to be over-sensitive about their level of tech acumen. It’s a fear of mortality thing, I’m thinking. → Read More
The European Court of Justice this morning ruled that content owners can not strong-arm Internet service providers (ISPs) into filtering out copyright-infringing content.
This case has its origin in a dispute between ISP Scarlet and SABAM, a Belgian management company responsible for authorizing the use by third parties of the musical works of authors, composers and editors. In 2004, the right-holders group established that users of Scarlet’s services were downloading such musical works from its catalogue by means of peer-to-peer (p2p) file-sharing networks. → Read More
I know, I know. Apple totally stole its new Notifications Center for iOS 5 from Android. But let’s be honest, they did a pretty good job with it. (Except for those impossibly small “X” buttons, that is.) As someone who switches between both platforms, one thing I really like about iOS 5′s Notification Center is that it’s available from the phone’s lockscreen, too. On Android, you typically have to unlock your phone in order to view your notifications.
Well, until now. Thanks to app maker FlyScreen and its brand-new “SuperFly API,” Android users may soon get their own lockscreen notifications, too. → Read More
It wasn’t that long ago that the idea of flipping on a television and seeing a commercial for anything Google-related seemed totally implausible. For many years, the company seemed to take a certain pride in not having to resort to traditional marketing channels, and it eschewed TV ads entirely for well over a decade of its existence. Then, in February 2010, the web giant made its TV commercial debut: with a Super Bowl Ad, no less (and a fantastic one at that).
Since then it’s become a bit more common to see Google ads running on TV — the company has started promoting its Chrome browser with ads, for example. And earlier today it ran what appears to be its first TV spot for its social network, Google+.
The ad, which appeared during the Thanksgiving Day Lions/Packers game, focuses heavily on Google+’s Circles feature and Hangouts, telling viewers that it’s “Sharing, but like real life”.
→ Read More
I recently had the pleasure of visiting a European city which is to a great extent a true example of how technology is changing society and business across Europe today. Once, Krakow was a city infamous for its nearness to Auschwitz and a terrifying example of how the Nazis could destroy a previously peaceful society where people of many creeds had lived together in peace. Under the Soviet occupation, it was just another grey Polish city. But since liberation in the later 1980s and the emergence of a strong Polish market economy in the 1990s/2000s, Krakow is taking its place in the technology world, along with the major hub of Warsaw, as a crucible of technology innovation.
I flew to Krakow to join the burgeoning startup group there known as Hive which showcased pitches from local startups aiming to go global. While there I shot the ‘mini documentary’ below which gives you a flavour of some of the early startup companies in Poland. → Read More
It’s not always easy to tell when Chrome has been updated, and at any rate the changes aren’t always significant enough to even wonder about it. But a pair of features worth caring about are user-bound come early 2012, according to Google developer advocate Paul Kinlan, who spoke recently at the Develop conference in Liverpool.
The conference is focused on game development, so it’s no surprise that the features are also game-centric. First, there will be plug-and-play gamepad, webcam, and microphone support in Chrome, and second, the nascent real time communication protocol WebRTC will begin to be implemented as well. This opens the door for seamless video chat and conceivably OnLive-like gaming services. → Read More
This is a guest post by Raj Uttamchandani
who runs Incubatrix, a company that develops cloud application software and digital films. He also advises the Government of India on international trade matters.
A year ago, I arrived in Chile at the invitation of the Chilean government, or rather, as one of the first 23 participants of the Start Up Chile pilot programme. In the last 12 months I have: → Read More
When it comes to gift-giving, there are a few presents that siimply go above and beyond. Getting a first car on your sixteenth birthday (if you’re so lucky) is one of those moments, and some young couples are even lucky enough to get a house as a wedding present. But after a house and a car, a brand new laptop is probably the best gift you can get. We’ve compiled a list of notebooks ranging in price from $839 to starting points of $1,999, so there should be something here for everyone.
Without any further ado, here are some of our reccomendations if you’re looking to get your loved one a new notebook. → Read More
HTC’s G1, the first Android phone, had a long and interesting life until it was retired last year, and although I loved the phone, I’ll be the first to admit that being limited to Android 1.6 was kind of a disappointment. Naturally modders had their way with it, but development slowed down long ago in favor of newer and more popular phones.
But today, in a feat of nostalgia and hacking skills, XDA-Dev poster Jcarrz1 has made a working AOSP port of the latest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, for the venerable G1. It may not extend the life of many phones out there (most have been long since abandoned, though not mine), but definitely demonstrates the flexibility of the platform. → Read More
Sex is like driving. In polls, nine out of ten people think they are “above average”. Letʼs say for a second that “average equals median” (I donʼt want to get into basic math arguments in the comments). Clearly, then, itʼs impossible for nine out ten people to be above average.
Itʼs also like sales or negotiating or poker or being “a good judge of people”. Nine out of ten think they are above average.
Most people have overinflated views of their performance in a variety of areas. → Read More
I recently hit Bucharest in Romania to experience the rising star event of the Central and Eastern European scene, HowToWeb. This annual conference is doing an amazing job of bringing CEE entrepreneurs together, and Bucharest is gradually emerging as one of the key tech hubs in the region. The reason? It’s pretty simple – there is great engineering talent, plenty of it (there are 22 million Romanians) and it’s affordable. I could of course name any other number of cities that fit this profile – Kiev, Ljubljana, Sofia, Warsaw and more – but at the moment HowToWeb is bringing many startups and entrepreneurs in from the region to network and party, and mashing them up with international speakers such as Mark Randall of Adobe, Michael Breidenbruecker, founder of Last.fm and RjDj and Pablos Holman of Intellectual Ventures Lab.
→ Read More
Would our society come crumbling down if Facebook suddenly disappeared? A hilarious new parody film trailer explores a ghastly future where “Zuckerberg deleted Facebook. And then he killed himself. Forever.” Click through to watch the panic ensue. → Read More
Well, this isn’t the strategy I was expecting, but it seems the FCC’s request to investigate the AT&T/T-Mobile deal under the lens of an administrative law judge last week just doesnt sit well with AT&T. Rather than be scrutinized, the company has instead withdrawn its application for the merger.
But don’t let that confuse you. Buying Deutsche Telekom AG’s T-Mobile is still the big blue carrier’s end goal — the FCC just happens to be blocking the road at the moment. → Read More
Shenzhen is a town of migrants. The estimated median ages is between 15 and 25 and the old and battered sits in wild contrast with the brand new. Even in the few years between my last visit and this one, the city has changed so drastically that I barely recognized it. The last time I was here I imagined the place as a cross between a favela and Blade Runner, high and low tech mashed together, the sharp tails of known carcinogens mixing with the soft end of Suntory in a highball glass and the scent of a young executive assistant’s Chanel No 5.
Now it’s mostly Suntory and Chanel, the carcinogens banished to the outskirts of town. There’s a boom in China, and Foxconn’s executives see a way out of many of the messes, real or imagined, that plagued the company.
Foxconn is pinning their future success on their employees’ future success. While this may seem like uncessary largesse, it is an interesting bet on the future of a working class that has been transformed into a middle class. And those workers, once forced by circumstance to stand for ten hours a day, are workers that no longer need or want what seemingly meager financial benefits Foxconn has to offer.
→ Read More
The European Court of Justice this morning ruled that content owners can not strong-arm Internet service providers (ISPs) into filtering out copyright-infringing content.
This case has its origin in a dispute between ISP Scarlet and SABAM, a Belgian management company responsible for authorizing the use by third parties of the musical works of authors, composers and editors. In 2004, the right-holders group established that users of Scarlet’s services were downloading such musical works from its catalogue by means of peer-to-peer (p2p) file-sharing networks. → Read More
Barcelona, Spain
New York City
San Francisco, CA
