By night, Jay writes for TechCrunch and has been contributing to the blog since 2009.
By day, he manages Digital Strategy for Alliance Data. Prior to that, he held Art Director and Designer jobs at GSW Worldwide and Resource Interactive leading interaction design and mobile prototype projects.
You can reach reach him at jaydonovan at crunchgear dot com.
Mint.com iOS users now have the ability to create and (more importantly) edit budgets directly on their iPad/iPhone. Previously, editing functionality was only available at the main Mint website. Additionally, users can also split transactions, giving them a better more granular look at their financial picture.
The main thrust of this update includes:
Imagine for a moment that you are sitting in your front yard in a lawn chair, sipping lemonade while attempting to read the latest news on your WiFi-only iPad. You’re just out of range of your WiFi signal. Your neighbor’s signal is super strong, but that selfish hooligan didn’t leave it wide open for you to leach onto. Wouldn’t you love to be able to use a portion of his spectrum anyway while away from your own?
Well, you still can’t, however… → Read More
On Friday May 18th, Apple filed a motion for a U.S. preliminary injunction against Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1. This follows a ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Northern District of California), siding with Apple on the question of whether Samsung is in violation of an iPad-related design patent (U.S. Patent No. D504,889). According to Foss Patents, the source of this story, the request could be valid and is likely to be upheld.
Samsung has until May 25th at high noon to respond. (OK not really…about the high noon thing).
What does it mean though? Will the Galaxy Tab 10.1 disappear from U.S. shores if Apple emerges victoriously with their injunction? → Read More
If you are looking for Piano or Rhodes-like feel for serious playing, Samson’s Carbon 49 USB MIDI Controller may not be right for you.
However, if you need a keyboard for some light playing or sample triggering, why not keep the expensive Kronos at home and bring the Carbon 49 out for the dangerous outdoor gigs that require expendable equipment? (I have seen many an expensive keyboard dragged end over end behind a golf cart after a show, or dropped or had beer spilled all over it while it was being underutilized at a gig as a mere MIDI controller).
Don’t get me wrong, the Carbon 49 — originally announced at NAMM but available starting May 15 — is a decently constructed keyboard controller and it comes complete with the usual on-board tools of the MIDI trade (modulation wheel, pitch wheel, data knob). Most importantly, it’s fairly portable and can use a laptop or even an iPad (not included) for both its MIDI brain and complete power supply (which makes for light travel). That’s a pretty great feature actually! → Read More
Last week at the 10x Xelerator, Andy Sparks impelled LaunchGram.com into motion and lazy people all over the world rejoiced (or they will…eventually). This new service, in the words of Sparks, “aggregates pre-release demand signals for products coming soon.”
The way it works is that consumers can create an account at LaunchGram’s website and subscribe to news about imminently launching products of interest (the iPhone 5 for example).
Once users subscribe, they can receive “LaunchGrams” via email with curated updates about product release date, pre-order availability, photos and video. (LaunchGram does the dirty work here by scouring the web for the most up to date information about listed products). The same information that shows up in emails can also be viewed on product-specific pages at the main website. → Read More
VenueSeen launched their new platform today that lets businesses aggregate location specific sentiment, via social photography. What does that mean in layman’s terms?
It means this startup company will monitor and identify any shared photos that a consumer takes inside a place of business. If the photos are shared via Instagram, Foursquare, Foodspotting or Facebook then VenueSeen can tabulate and send reports about those photos to a subscribing business, complete with comments. → Read More
David Ellefson Rock Shop is a solid and simple guitar/bass amp-modeling app that runs on iOS. It is made by PocketLabWorks and works in conjunction with the company’s iRiff Port cable/interface. In case you hadn’t guessed by the name of the app, special consultation was provided by David Ellefson (bass player and founding member of Megadeth) in order to achieve the sound of his bass and guitar rigs.
How does it sound? The tones, while specific to a few amps and cabinets, are quite excellent and resonant. The settings are based off Mr. Ellefson’s amp setup which provides a gritty bass tone, full of attack. I liked it. (You can hear David playing through it at the PocketLabWorks website).
I had a few questions about how it was developed so rather than take my usual Paneldome approach, this time I was able to track down David for a Skype call and get some info from him directly. He was kind enough to take the time to talk with me. → Read More
The first thing that popped into my mind as I interviewed Suzy Bureau about her Columbus Ohio Startup project called The ManCard was “This is all wrong. We should be shooting skeet, or tearing out drywall or fly fishing — anything but sitting in a coffee shop drinking lattes.” Despite the emasculating surroundings our conversation continued as the ebullient Ms. Bureau described the app she and her compadres built and submitted in a single weekend.
A product of StartupWeekend here in the viable Sili-Corn Valley of Columbus Ohio, the team of 5 developers, designers and marketers conceived, built and submitted the app in a span of 54 hours. They just issued an update to this 4-week-old app today.
How does this app work? You submit a picture of yourself or of your friends doing something “manly” and the greater community of people with the app vote on the masculinity of that photo. Simple enough. → Read More
If you tried to judge whether NFC mobile payments are ready for prime time — based on the amount of chatter you hear in your newsfeed — you’d think the contactless technology was on the brink of ubiquitous adoption.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, there are documented sources out there citing that we are four, five, maybe even ten years away from a realistic and entrenched infrastructure that would allow the masses to make face-to-face payments using secure elements embedded in smart cards and mobile phones.
Five years. Just think about where you were five years ago. What kind of phone did you have? Where did you work? How did you communicate with others in these days of yore? Seriously, what has changed for you in that time? What has changed in your environment in that time? → Read More
With all the talk about the potential of Google Glass, I thought it might be nice to drop back in on the current state of Augmented Reality — the kind where you still use a smartphone to view markers or images.
In the spirit of Google’s “20-percent time”, Melbourne Australia based mobile app development company jTribe developed an Augmented Reality Easter egg hunt for their fair city this Easter.
The company took one day a week (for the last 10 weeks or so) to work on their own project which launches today.
The app, which is called EggRaider, has a radar-style viewer to show the general direction of virtual eggs the company has attached to landmarks all around Melbourne. Once you get close to an egg, you switch to Augmented Reality view (by tapping the camera button in the app) to see the egg and collect it. “Race against friends and family to collect the most” says jTribe.
*Note that the virtual eggs are only available at Melbourne, Australia landmarks. There is a demo view though, so you can get the idea of how it works if you are so inclined. → Read More
On the surface this may seem like an unlikely interview. I mean, we’re a tech blog and Andrew Bird is a musician. But beneath the organic and strikingly analog sounds of Mr. Bird’s beautiful music there is this whole sea of technology at work — especially during live solo performances.
Andrew was kind enough to take some time out of his touring schedule on the eve of the release of his new album called Break It Yourself in order to tell me a bit more about the different gadgets and pedals he uses to achieve his unique sound and also about his vision and approach to making music. An approach where technology is involved, but is certainly not the master.
TC:
Andrew Bird, I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with us here at TechCrunch. Before we get started, I thought maybe you could, in your own words, describe your music for people who may not be familiar.
AB:
Well, my main instrument is violin, but I think of myself as a songwriter who happens to play violin. I also play guitar. I will often times loop my violin to expand the instrument beyond its linear restrictions. So I do a lot of live looping and manipulate the instrument to get a wider set of sounds — from double bass to metallic sounds. → Read More
Movilway, the company pioneering prepaid mobile payments in Central and South America, recently updated their arsenal of tools to include a new custom Android tablet Point Of Sale (POS) terminal as well as a new MoviPIN system for online purchases. Both systems — available at select locations — bring digital purchasing power to those without bank accounts or credit cards.
“It’s a common problem in rural and remote areas of the world, where many people simply do not have access to bank accounts,” said Movilway strategist Daniela Morgenstern. “How do you order and pay for online goods when you don’t have a credit card or a bank card?” → Read More
Another Augmented Reality update from Total Immersion popped up on my radar at this year’s Mobile World Congress. This nifty app, demoed at the Texas Instruments booth, is loaded with retail potential for e-commerce situations. This is not the first AR tool we’ve seen to assist with retail apparel purchases, however it is one of the best. Excellent AR tracking. → Read More
At many conferences, like the Mobile World Congress, it seems the best demos usually end up happening while waiting in line for lunch or for a cab. While rolling through the pile of video content I collected at the MWC this year, I ran back across this Augmented Reality demo by Aurasma. It is a perfect example of the “elevator demo” and in one way illustrates the portability of many AR concepts – they don’t rely on a bunch of fixed assets or perfect lighting situations. → Read More
DigiMo, is a mobile payments platform that actually makes sense to me. When I sat down with CEO Yossi Yarkoni and VP of Marketing Nir Shimony at the Mobile World Congress to hear about their concept, which is piloting in Israel right now, the first thing I thought was “wow, why didn’t somebody think of this before”. It’s a pretty good idea and solves many of the problems that plague mobile, face-to-face payments.
It actually works with existing infrastructure and requires no Point Of Sale hardware changes by merchants. Really. No NFC terminals to buy. No new card readers needed. This is a major sticking point for merchant adoption of new mobile payments platforms. → Read More
Yesterday, Metaio CTO Peter Meier ran a small demo for me that describes how their new Creator Mobile software allows any user to map a 3D space with a coordinate system, so they can then add their own digital, Augmented Reality content to that space. This mobile app will work in conjunction with their desktop solution called simply Metaio Creator (video description at this link), which is where the content is actually associated with the coordinate system, via “drag and drop”. → Read More
I spent a good portion of my adult career as a graphic designer. I still look at the world through that lens, so I am always happy to stumble across some beautiful designs, no matter where they might be.
Stumble I did, into the Golla booth at the Mobile World Congress today (2 hours of sleep and about 300 calories of food in the last 36 hours) to find a pretty killer lineup of beautifully designed bags for all your gadgets. → Read More
Texas Instruments announced earlier today that they are partnering with Harman and iRobot to provide OMAP 5 as the core processor for new products being developed in these two companies. To understand what this means in TI’s greater strategy, we need to back up a bit to take a look as some other initiatives they have going on and see where they all tie together. → Read More
Besides a fear of imminent conjunctivitis from handling the same phone as hundreds of others at the Sony Xperia Press Event at the GSMA Mobile World Congress…what else comes to mind?
This phone — a model marketed mostly toward a younger segment — is, to me, reminiscent in some minuscule way of the old Sony W series phones I loved so much (way back in the day). I think it’s the thickness that reminds me of its Cro-Magnon predecessor. → Read More
The rumors were true, everyone. After months of anticipation and speculation, the device once known as the HTC Edge (or Endeavor) has been officially revealed here at MWC as the HTC One X. The One X (called a “multimedia livewire” in the press release) has an 8-megapixel camera, 4.7-inc LCD display, and 1080p video recorder. The new One X runs Android with the HTC Sense 4 UI overlay. → Read More
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