Biggs is the East Cost Editor of TechCrunch.
Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at john@techcrunch.com.
Yesterday, to much fanfare and resolute sentiment, HP announced a return to what made it a great company to begin with: poorly-named and generic computing devices tarted up to take on Dell. This year it’s the HP Envy SpectreXT, a thin and light that can’t officially be called an Ultrabook because that’s an Intel marketing term and these things sometimes run on AMD chips.
I think it’s important to point out the clear problems in the above statement: because Intel officially controls the “ultrabook” spec – including the pricing, screen size, speed, and physical size – manufacturers must toe the line when it comes to what can and cannot be sold under that rubric. In short, Intel’s own standards have so long stymied the OEM’s ability to innovate that, in the end, we’re all essentially buying Intel PCs no matter the brand or maker. → Read More
When you run some of the biggest and best presses in town, it’s hard to imagine them ever going silent. Brian Kibby of McGraw-Hill, well known textbook publisher, would be happy to shut them down tomorrow if the need arose. He doesn’t want to pay the costs of printing, paper, and distribution. He just wants to push the ebook industry into the future.
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When we planned our mini meet-up series, we expected a few geeks in a bar somewhere drinking and swapping stories about C#. Nothing prepared us for the onslaught. At one point, 1,256 of us filled all three floors of Bar 13, a techno club near Union Square, and for most of the night I was jostled, bumped, and generally mauled by the crowd. It was, in a word, amazing.
If you missed it, shame on you. If you were there and we talked, email me. I do, however, hope you enjoyed what amounted to TechCrunch’s triumphant return to the New York start-up scene. → Read More
Not many people think much good can come from New Jersey. Sure there’s the Shore and Boardwalk Empire, but for the most part it’s “bridge and tunnel” this and Snooki that. Well that’s all supposed to change thanks to TechLaunch, a new accelerator based at Montclair State University.
Noted New Jersey angel Mario Casabona founded the accelerator as a way to keep high-tech from hitting Wall Street or DUMBO. A group of 12 companies will get $20,000 during an intense 12-week program with a number of local mentors including Chris Ackermann of Facebook and Michel M. Bitritto of the NJ Meadowlands Commission Business Accelerator. → Read More
Former TC’er Paul Carr’s latest venture, called NSFWCorp, has launched into private beta. It’s a weekly news magazine dubbed as the “the Economist as written by ‘The Daily Show’” and will be available for $26 a year or “two bucks a month.” What’s particularly interesting, however, is how the company is offering initial subscriptions using a clever sponsor model.
If you join the waiting list now right now, you will be placed onto a waiting list. Sponsors will pay $5 for each subscriber in tranches of 400 for a minimum $2,000 sponsorship deal. These readers will then be encouraged, in six months, to subscribe officially. → Read More
Nest and Lowe’s have teamed up to sell the Nest “learning thermostat” at 500 Lowe’s stores throughout the country, a first for a major bit of high-tech geekery.
This is Nest’s first retail partner and effectively legitimizes the hype around what many called a shiny wall bauble. → Read More
As a big watch nerd, I love sharing cool watches with you guys in hopes that my obsession, as unseemly as it is, will be passed from writer to reader like an STD. This time I was lucky enough to be able to handle the new Ernst Benz Officer ChronoLunar, a huge “officer-style” chronograph with day-date-lunar cycle registers and a 24-hour dial.
To be clear, this watch uses the Valjoux 7751 movement found in any number of similarly-featured watches. This includes a number of Omegas, Zenos, Glycines, and, most interestingly, custom watch projects. Think of the movement like an CPU and ETA and Valjoux as Intel and AMD. Many manufacturers uses the same movements in multiple watches and the wild fluctuations in price – from a thousand or so to nearly $10 grand, are entirely based on case-type, finish, and (sadly) marketing. In the world of high-end watches, think of Ernst Benz as a boutique manufacturer like Alienware or Falcon Northwest. → Read More
If you watch one homemade Japanese RC car transformer video today, make it this one. This amazing little roadster switches from sports car to dancing robot in a few seconds and it can even walk while in robot mode, and, more important, transform back into a car in the blink of an eye.
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And we’re off: the TC New York Mini Meet-Up is on for tonight, May 8, from 6pm-10pm at Bar 13 on 13th St. and University Pl. It will be a Blastoise.
Special thanks to our volunteers and good old Jordan for spearheading the entire operation. A special thank you goes out to our sponsors. And thank you for making this a potential success.
You can RSVP on our PlanCast page for the Meet-Up.
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The latest in what I like to call pro-point-and-shoots (I’d put the Canon G12 and the S95 in this category), the TG-1 from Olympus promises high-speed, f2.0 snapshots in a body that can take a lick and, potentially, keep on ticking.
When we last saw Olympus, they were killing it with their micro 4/3s models. This one, at 12-megapixel shooter, is a little bit different but it still is compelling enough to carry as a second camera. It has a backlit CMOS sensor and TruePic VI image processor as well as high-speed autofocus and a 10x zoom. → Read More
Twitpic was once the de facto standard for photo sharing on Twitter. Before Instagram and Twitter’s own photo-sharing solution, the service worked a treat, allowing us to compress our photos and share them in the twinkle of an eye.
The app resided as sort of a symbiotic pilot fish near Twitter’s gaping maw. Now, however, it’s angling for center stage. → Read More
Trying new APIs is tricky. You can spend hours setting things up, gaining permissions, and learning syntax before you even get to write one line of code. That’s why CodeNow.com is cool. In short, it allows you to try APIs before you invest too much time into them and, as an added bonus, it acts as a code repository.
The site is currently in private beta but it’s accepting users tonight. → Read More
Sure, GPS helps us get from Point A to Point B, but what if you’re just trying to find the Cinnabon? A new system from Fraunhofer allows for in-store (or in-mall) navigation and uses very simple sensors to asses where you are in the building at any time.
The system works when you enter the edifice and scan a QR code. This identifies your current position. A built-in pedometer and compass assess the speed and direction you’re going and, rather than relying on GPS signals, the system can tell where you are simply based on stride length.
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If you’ve always wanted to try to build an Arduino project, this may be a great way to start. Matt Williamson built a tiny, Arduino-based motion sensor that will SMS you when something moves by your desk or into a room. It’s completely open source and the notifications system runs on your PC thanks to a simple Python script.
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Horace Dediu at Asymco has run the numbers and it’s not looking good. Samsung and Apple now control an estimated 99% of vendor profits with HTC scraping in with 1%. BlackBerry and Nokia barely register and, in fact, form a loss.
First, I’d like to note why Dediu believes carriers are willing to cede so much of their profit to Apple and, presumably, Samsung. It’s mostly about lock-in, a sort of bear hug that encourages customers to stay put in the long run. He writes: → Read More
A post on CNN Money found that during a quick assessment of 10 Verizon stores and reps in New York – arguably a small sample size – the representatives would pitch Verizon’s Android’s 4G phones over the “old fashioned” 3G iPhone. Said one rep: “The iPhone is a great phone, but it’s on 3G. I’m not going to recommend a phone that’s outdated.”
Now I don’t doubt David Goldman’s story that Verizon reps are pushing Android inventory in New York if only to clear out the back room. However, I had to test it myself. I chatted briefly with a Verizon rep online and found that she (I assume it was a she as her name was Chiquita) just wanted to close the sale rather than steer me towards anything else:
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Researchers at Disney and Carnegie Mellon University have created an interesting new technology using Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing that allows nearly any object to sense multiple points of contact on its complex service. This would allow, for example, doorknobs to understand when to lock and unlock based on your finger position and environmental controls based on the user’s current body position. Lying down? The lights go out. Feet on the floor? The lights go up.
The technology, built jointly by CMU and the Disney Research Institute in Pittsburgh, Penn., can also add more interesting interaction to smartphones. Even bodies of water can turn into “touchscreens” with your position inside the liquid registering as a touch event. → Read More
Facebook just posted a fith amendment to its IPO filing, confirming the price range for its stock at IPO, how much it will raise, and noting the future threat of patent lawsuits from Yahoo over hardware in Facebook’s Open Compute Project. The company is selling 180,000,000 shares of Class A common stock and is pricing them at $28-$35. That means they’re raising between $5 billion and $6.3 billion. On top of that, existing shareholders are selling 157,415,352 shares.
Here’s the excerpt:
Facebook, Inc. is offering 180,000,000 shares of its Class A common stock and the selling stockholders are offering 157,415,352 shares of Class A common stock. We will not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares by the selling stockholders. This is our initial public offering and no public market currently exists for our shares of Class A common stock. We anticipate that the initial public offering price will be between $28.00 and $35.00 per share.
This confirms the earlier pricing that we posted about today. We had a more specific range than The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times, saying the price was at $27-$35. We were off by a dollar, but they said ‘high 20s to mid 30s’ in their original stories. → Read More
BeClose is a small but interesting start-up in Tysons Corner, Virginia. They make home monitoring systems for the elderly, allowing them to stay at home even when they may be fragile or lack motility. The system consists of a number of motion sensors as well as a weight pad (to see when they’re sleeping) and a panic button that notifies the authorities and kin if there’s something wrong.
The new update to the UI creates a dashboard experience for caregivers. They can see, at a glance, sleep patterns, movement, and even weight. If something is amiss – like they’re not getting out of bed after a certain time or whether they’re leaving the house too little or too much – you can either call in to see what’s up or go visit. Anyway, would it kill you to maybe go visit your mother? Hmm? → Read More
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