More than a fair amount of business success hinges on telling stories about the future. The reason Yahoo’s market cap is down to $19.83 billion from a high of $55 billion is because shareholders don’t believe that it has a future. The reason Aol bought Bebo for $850 million (a little over half of Aol’s current market cap!) is that at the time it essentially believed — after processing analysis and reports, of course — that it was worth that much …
→ Read More
You’ve got a few hours left before all of the free “Get it before Christmas!” shipping deals come to a close, and you’ve still got people left gift-less. What ever will you do?
Give’m the gift that just about everyone would love: pornography booze the gift of music! We’ve had all sorts of aural accessories come through our office in the last year, so join us after the jump for a quick, last-minute recap of some of our favorites.
→ Read More
There’s been a recent interesting trend in the tablet market: devices 8 inches and smaller that are as powerful as their bigger cousins but considerably more portable and convenient. In this episode of Fly Or Die we talk about the mid-size trend and decide whether a smaller tablet makes for a better tablet.
→ Read More
Playdom’s Gardens of Time took the #1 spot of Facebook’s Most Popular Games of 2011 list. But wait, Zynga’s CityVille was ranked #3 despite peaking at over 100 million monthly active users and 21 million daily active users — far more than Gardens of Time’s peaks of 17 million MAU and 4 million DAU, or its current stats according to AppData. That’s because Facebook’s list was mostly based on Yes / No user surveys of whether they’d recommend the game, and hardly on active user count like it said
It’s almost as if Facebook used its cloudy methodology to keep Zynga from completely dominating the list, as the Mark Pincus machine currently owns all 5 Facebook games with the most DAU and still ended up with 4 of the top 10 spots on Facebook’s list. → Read More
Open. Open. Open. Open. Open. Open. Open. Open. Open.
Every chance they get, someone from Google brings this up as a huge advantage of Android over rivals like iOS. Never mind the fact that a good percentage of the time it’s pure marketing bullshit — why exactly isn’t Google Wallet on Google’s own Galaxy Nexus device? — even when it’s true, there are some very real downsides. The user experience angle has been debated ad nauseam. More interesting is what we’re seeing now. A downside for Google.
Amazon’s Kindle Fire runs on Android, but nothing about it is Google’s Android. It doesn’t look like Android and it doesn’t feature Google’s own apps. That has to annoy Google, but something exposed the other day must truly piss them off: the Kindle Fire redirects all Android Market requests to Amazon’s Appstore. That includes all attempts to go to market.android.com even when the Fire’s accelerated browsing (routed through Amazon’s servers) is turned off. → Read More
Call me naive, but I just assumed that when Asus showed off a device called the Transformer Prime, they had some sort of deal to license or at least provide some kind of royalty to the Transformers franchise. Apparently not, as Hasbro has just filed a lawsuit alleging that Asus is infringing on the Transformers trademark.
Now, if the device were just called the Transformer, I think I would come down on Asus’ side here. After all, transform is a common word and although it may recall to mind certain memories from the 80s (and, to a lesser extent, the last few years), it is just a word and it also describes the transforming capacity of the device. But then they had to go and call it the Prime. What’s next, Soundwave speakers? A Bumblebee netbook? → Read More
Just last week, Google was promoting the fact that “Google+” was the No. 2 fastest-growing search term of the year in its annual Zeitgest list. And it did have an amazing pop when it hit “10 million members” a couple weeks after launch last summer. People wanted to know what this new Google+ thing was all about. And since it didn’t exist the year before, on a percentage basis the growth in the number of searches for the term was astronomical.
If you are not paying close attention and hear that “Google+” was the No. 2 search term of the year, you might assume that a lot of people are still searching for it. But you would be wrong. The Zeitgeist site shows all sorts of stats about that pop in searches for “Google+” back in July.
What you won’t find there is the overall trend of searches for the term, and the fact that searches have been declining. → Read More
Flickr has just pushed out an update to its iPhone app, easing the batch upload process and making some UI tweaks. It will surely be welcomed by the many Flickr users who use iPhones, but Flickr’s continual reticence to develop for new platforms remains a problem. It took them more than a year to produce a native iPhone app, about the same for Android. We’re coming up on the two-year mark for the iPad — isn’t it about time?
Let’s hope so. It’s a big opportunity, and with rumors of a high-resolution iPad around the corner with the chops to do Photoshops, Flickr should be straining at the bit. → Read More
If you were one of the lucky few that managed to snag a TouchPad during HP’s (maybe) final fire sale of TouchPad inventory two weeks ago, you might be receiving a little present soon via PayPal.
It seems that some people were charged quite a bit extra for shipping. It seems a bit fussy to complain about when you’re getting a device like this for such a ridiculous price, but hey, not everyone can spare ten bucks these days. Not only that, but there was chaos at eBay and PayPal during the promotion; many commenters complained of errors, lag, and lost orders. Fear not: you will be compensated for your troubles. → Read More
In 2012, Facebook will be making 45 privacy-related changes to comply with the recommendations of an audit by Ireland’s Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) released today. Below I’ve compiled a roadmap of all the changes Facebook will implement based on the the 149 pages of DPC recommendations and how the social network says it will address them. → Read More
We’ve been waiting for Intel’s promised smartphone effort for a long, long time now. The few desultory pushes by the likes of Acer and niche OEMs has done little to dent the dominance of rival ARM, whose low-power chips have become an indispensable part of smartphone architecture.
Just last week, though, Intel gave a private showing of a smartphone prototype that appears to be more or less feature complete and ready to be established as the basis for a platform. The device was running Gingerbread (Android 2.3), but funnily enough actually resembles an ice cream sandwich. → Read More
Smart HDTVs will be a big trend at CES 2012. Nearly every major brand will release major updates to existing lines along with completely new products. However, Samsung has long sold a successful line of smart TVs, but a just-released CES 2012 teaser video shows the upcoming models will be a bit different. They’re going to ditch remotes. These HDTVs look to be controlled by mobile devices. → Read More
The future of technology software is contingent upon the capabilities of the hardware that it powers. That’s why Jawbone, a company that makes pretty and pretty useful hardware like the Jawbone UP, the Jawbone ERA and the Jambox speaker is on my shortlist for startups that will be huge huge huge in 2012 — despite some notable bumps along the way. → Read More
You already know that social networking sites have been getting huge around the world, but an annual report out today from comScore shows what exactly is going at a wonderful new level of detail, with surprises for even long-time industry watchers like me.
1 in every 5 minutes of time online is now being spent on social networking sites, up from a mere 6% in early 2007. The sites, led by Facebook, now reach 82% of the world’s internet-using population — about 1.2 billion people in total. This growth is happening across countries, with 41 of the 43 countries that the web measurement firm tracks showing penetration of 85% or more. → Read More
If you haven’t taken the time to play with Swype (the trace-to-type mobile keyboard alternative), you’re missing out — and I’m not just saying that because it launched at one of our conferences. As evidenced by the fact that it’s now built right into a ton of Android handsets, it’s pretty damn good.
This morning, it’s getting even better. Swype has just launched a new Beta with two fancy new tricks: Dragon-based voice dictation, and an improved ability to analyze the words you’ve already typed to better determine what you’re trying to type next. → Read More
Today, a new startup accelerator for women, the Women Innovate Mobile (WIM) Accelerator, is opening its doors for applications. The program will start off small, offering two to five companies seed funding of $18,000, plus mentoring, support, and free office space in New York during the course of its three-month program.
→ Read More
After a 3 month audit by the Office of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), Facebook has issued a statement that “a DPC report demonstrates how Facebook adheres to European data protection principles and complies with Irish law.” Still, Facebook has committed to making a wide range of changes to its privacy policies and features. These include deleting or anonymizing retained user data, increasing access to and educating users about data and application privacy, and notifying users about the facial recognition feature “Tag Suggest”.
The DPC ruling could be considered a victory for Facebook, as none of the changes it has agreed to will significantly hamper its ability to launch new products or monetize through advertising. → Read More
Are you a big fan of Life Of Pi? Well don’t go and get the Story Of O just because they sound similar. Instead, put your query to BookLamp, a free service/project aimed at creating a database of “like” books. Similar to Pandora, the service is based on the Book Genome Project and attempts to find books that are similar based on measurable criteria. The project, founded in 2003, is trying to figure out the “DNA” of certain books by rating them based on various characteristics.
Like similar music services, BookLamp gives books different ratings based on their content. These ratings drive a recommendations engine that can For example, The DaVinci Code is filed under History/Culture, Catholic Institutions, and Travel. These traits are compared to other books and rated based on similarities. → Read More
