Looking for a quick last-minute gift? Not feeling up to fighting the holiday traffic, crowds and checkout lines? Just too lazy busy to shop? Then you may want to consider giving the gift of an iOS app. You can gift any paid app from iTunes on your computer or from the app’s description page on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. Just scroll down past the screenshot and look for the “gift this app” button. All you’ll need is the recipient’s email address to complete the transaction.
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Surprise! GoDaddy has just recanted their support of SOPA, issuing a press release and blasting out a massive mountain of tweets on the matter. This comes just hours after they were seemingly cementing their position, shrugging off the boycotts as something that had yet to cause “any impact to [their] business”. → Read More
I swear, it never ends — not long after a U.S. court passed down a judgment that saw RIM change the name of their new operating system, the company has once again gotten themselves into a tiff over trademarks. This time, the name in question is “BBM,” RIM’s preferred shorthand for their popular BlackBerry Messenger service.
The lawsuit comes courtesy of BBM Canada, a not-for-profit broadcast and audience measurement organization that’s been in business considerably longer than RIM has. Originally known as the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement, the group was originally founded in 1944 and took on the BBM moniker in 2001 — well before RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger service came to be. → Read More
Users of LogMeIn’s Ignition are in for a pleasant surprise this holiday season. The once paid — and quite expensive — app is now migrating to a freemium model.
That said, users who paid for Ignition won’t have to cough up the dough for a LogMeIn Pro subscription, but they will get the added premium features including HD remote control (and HD streaming) from their computers to their iOS devices. → Read More
You spoke and we listened. The holidays are upon us and yesterday we asked all of you what you would want as a gift out of six different options. Those options were: iPad 2, Canon S100, Kindle Fire, Galaxy Nexus, Boxee Box, and last but not least, a Kinect for Xbox 360. At first, all of you wanted an iPad 2. Then we asked one more time, and you all chose a Galaxy Nexus for your most wanted gift. So, with it being that time of the year and all, we are giving away..
a Galaxy Nexus to one lucky reader! → Read More
HackFwd, the pan-European accelerator created by Lars Hinrichs, the founder of LinkedIn competitor XING, recently held its open PitchInBerlin session, where startups are invited to enter the programme. It’s a sign that HackFwd, one of the few accelerators in Europe to stress the need for technical co-founders, is opening up to new teams. I went to the event in Berlin and interviewed all the startups pitching on the day, as you’ll see in the below video. → Read More
Pop quiz, phone fans: what device will you soon be able to buy in the U.K. that costs nearly twice as much as a Galaxy Nexus and looks three (maybe four!) times stranger? Well, if you’ve read the headline, you already know the answer: it’s the BlackBerry Porsche P’9981.
T3 reports that high-end retailer Harrod’s will be carrying the love-it-or-hate-it device in store by the end of the year. What really gets me is the price tag to it: the Porsche will sell for €1,275 ($1,662, or £1,021). → Read More
“I wouldn’t touch you with a thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole.”
There’s a bit of inherent risk when shopping online. You’re handing over your credit card to a retailer that promises to ship you something in return. Most of the time transactions are completed without issue and orders are fulfilled as promised. Sometimes things go awry, though. And sometimes Best Buy ruins Christmas.
Best Buy started reaching out to customers earlier this week — you know, mere days before Christmas — that the retailer was unable to fulfill orders placed as far back as November. Big Blue was sorry but they were canceling the affected orders. Happy holidays! Signed, your merry friends at Best Buy! → Read More
Sorry Galaxy S owners — even though your device has a near-identical spec sheet to the ICS-friendly Nexus S, Samsung has announced on their corporate blog that the company’s first Galaxy device won’t be getting the offical bump to Android 4.0.
The original Galaxy S isn’t the only one to get the snub, as the 7-inch Galaxy Tab won’t be able to join in the fun either.
It looks like TouchWiz deserves most of the blame here — according to Samsung Tomorrow, neither device has enough RAM or ROM to accomodate TouchWiz and all of its Samsung-designed accoutrements without affecting the quality of use. → Read More
NXP Software, developer of the CineXPlayer mobile application, is launching a new iOS app for recording and converting video into 3D. The app, VideoCam3D, lets you record in both blue/red and split screen 3D and works in conjunction with the CineXPlayer video viewing app, which also supports 3D movie playback.
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Sigh. Here we go again.
A patent troll called Mount Hamilton Partners has filed two separate patent infringement lawsuits against daily deals juggernaut Groupon and Google, which also operates a digital couponing business called Google Offers.
Mount Hamilton Partners, which purports to be an ‘investor in technology companies’ on its website, garnered headlines about two and a half years ago when it sued OpenTable right before the restaurant reservation service provider went public. Now they’re going after Google and Groupon. → Read More
In-Flight Wi-Fi provider Gogo has just filed for an IPO, and will raise as much as $100 million in a public offering.
Gogo, which has raised over $500 million in funding, provides in-flight connectivity to nine of the ten North American airlines that provide internet access, including Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, Virgin America, Alaska Airlines, US Airways, Frontier Airlines and Air Tran Airways. The company also has trial agreement with United Airlines and Air Canada. → Read More
Remember when researchers said a security vulnerability could allow hackers to remotely take over Hewlett-Packard LaserJet printers and even cause them to burst into flames? Fun times, for sure.
Of course, HP was quick to point out that the researchers had it all wrong, lamented the “sensational and inaccurate reporting” surrounding the supposed security flaw and said not a single customer had reported any instances of unauthorized access to its LaserJet printers. → Read More
Well, it’s that time of year again when families come together to stare moodily at each other over lunch and, in theory at least, we’re supposed to be thinking about others less fortunate than ourselves. To that end, stay you hand before you switch off the office PC and head off for some seasonal shopping. For those CPUs could be put to good work for charity, no less.
The Charity Engine is a non-profit volunteer computing grid. Based on Berkeley University’s BOINC software for grid computing – as used by dozens of famous ‘citizen science’ projects such as SETI@home. Charity Engine’s version of BOINC simply donates what it makes from research projects on its grid and donates the cash to charity, while incentivising users with randomly generated cash prizes. Profit from the commissions from science and industry is shared 50-50 between the charities and prize winners. You can use the invite code for the beta: CRUNCH. → Read More
Kiip is not an ad network. It’s a mobile games reward network. Today it launches Swarm, a feature with a very unique value proposition: Let brands sponsor in-app tournaments where users win big prizes for high scores. Brands get exposure by piggybacking on an app’s existing user base, developers get paid, and users get to play for real-world rewards without being interrupted by ads.
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India is getting a second government-sponsored tablet. The first model (the so-called Aakash) sold out in just a few days after it was launched online last week, but maker DataWind has already followed up with another 7-inch model, the Ubislate 7. It was actually announced a few weeks back, but is now available for pre-order, priced at US$57 (US$10 more than the original Aakash), and features much better specs.
The Ubislate 7 comes with the following features. → Read More
A new, relatively stealth startup called Rock City Apps is gearing up for the launch of a mobile application called UpTo, and has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Detroit Venture Partners and Ludlow Ventures to finance the development of the product.
The company, which is based in Detroit, Michigan, plans to launch its first iPhone app ‘soon’ and lets you indicate your interest by inviting you to sign up to receive an invitation to the private beta.
You can do that here. → Read More
It seems Sharp saw good sales when the company launched the so-called AQUOS PHONE THE HYBRID 007SH on the Japanese market, the world’s first clamshell Android phone. Today, Sharp’s AQUOS PHONE IS14SH [JP] went on sale in Japan, and again they squeezed a ton of smartphone functions into a feature phone body.
The obvious target here are customers who want to type on a physical slide-out keypad but don’t want to miss out on the typical specs a Japanese Android phone is offering. → Read More
Since the list of 120 or so SOPA supporting companies hit the Internet yesterday, the lines have been drawn; People are publicly promising to pull thousands of domains from domain registrar Godaddy after it appeared on the list as a supporter. Other people are calling those people “bullies.”
Whether you’re for or against SOPA has become somewhat of a pain point amongst techies, with the overwhelming majority, including myself and almost every other writer on the TechCrunch team, leaning heavily towards “against.” → Read More
In the West, the battle for the social graph is over for now. Facebook is the undisputed champion. All my Western friends use Facebook, and many are addicted.
“If Facebook is the world’s social graph, then QQ (Tencent’s instant messenger) is China’s social graph,” says Hong Bo (a.k.a Keso), China’s most famous tech blogger. In China, Tencent is the longstanding champ, but its title is being disputed by Sina, one of China’s earliest portal sites.
Sina Weibo is the biggest story in the Chinese Internet over the past year, reaching 250 million registered users, and about 25 million daily active users as of Q3 2011. The coverage of China’s state-directed media leaves a lot to be desired, so Sina Weibo had become a prime source for breaking news events and commentary. It’s also a prime source of celebrity sightings and cultural memes—actress Yao Chen has more than 15 million followers. And instead of exchanging name cards at dinner, it’s now common practice to instead ex → Read More
