I’ve been spending some quality time with HTC’s Titan II, and I would never call it a bad phone. But that’s not the question — good, bad, fast, slow, ugly, beautiful… they don’t matter unless I feel that I’d put down money and live my life with this device. And even though I expected this to be one of my favorites, I walk away from my review certain that I wouldn’t exchange cash for this handset.
HTC is great at building quality hardware and Microsoft’s new mobile platform is fresh, different, and intuitive. But the way that the duo comes together leaves me unimpressed and disappointed, namely in the camera and the display. Past that, the thickness of the device paired with poor battery life does nothing to make up for these more minor disappointments. In essence, it’s simply not good enough.
Let’s talk about why. → Read More
According to a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the popularity of check-in apps continues to grow, though it still isn’t quite mainstream yet. Pew’s latest survey found that in February 2012, 18% of U.S. smartphone owners over 18 used geosocial check-in apps like Foursquare. That’s up from 12% in May 2011. Even among adults who said they own a cell phone but not a smartphone, 11% said they used check-in apps. This means that 10% of U.S. adults (including those who don’t own a cell phone), have now used check-in services at some point in the past. → Read More
Well that’s some slick timing. Eduardo Saverin, known for co-founding Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg back in their college days at Harvard, has given up his United States citizenship.
His name appeared on a list published on April 30 by the United States Office of the Federal Register, which issues a quarterly list of people who have given up their U.S. citizenship. The switch will almost certainly decrease the number of American taxes he owes on the $3.84 billion or so he is reportedly in line to make once Facebook goes public, which is widely expected to happen next week. → Read More
Is this Zynga’s next cash cow? It looks like Farmville 2.0 is already in beta testing under the name ‘Big Harvest’ in the Philippines, a tipster tells us.
As you can see, the game is way more three-dimensional, the crops are really lush and the graphics are just of a different quality level. There are several tweaks to the game play. Crops that are harvested can be turned into feed. Animals jump around after being fed. Players can take the milk and eggs from their animals and make pies.
Zynga declined to comment. “We don’t comment on what we may or may not be working on. What we can tell you is that we’re always looking for ways to bring players the best experience by listening to their feedback and continuously innovating on our games,” the company said in a statement. → Read More
Today Facebook will start sending the first of three billion notices to users about proposed changes to its privacy policy, which were made to comply with a Spring deadline for implementing recommendations from an audit by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner. The three biggest changes Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer for Policy Erin Egan told me about when we spoke this morning are several clarifications of existing but sometimes vague policies:
Facebook’s goal is to make it as easy as possible for users to understand how their data is used, and how that’s changing. So Facebook is also launching the “Facebook Terms and Policies Hub” to house its 10 policy documents, including a redlined changes version of today’s privacy policy (known as the Data Use Policy), and explanations of those changes. Facebook will hold a live-streamed Q&A about the changes on May 14th. Users will have seven days from now to give feedback on the changes before they’re implemented barring major objections. → Read More
Here in these parts, we may write a tad too much about our Silicon Valley gaming brethren like San Francisco’s Zynga and Redwood Shores’ Electronic Arts.
But there’s actually a company that’s worth quite a bit more and has outperformed both since its IPO last December. It’s Nexon, a free-to-play gaming company that started out in South Korea and quietly grew a handful of titles into multi-billion dollar franchises over the last decade (see the chart below). The Tokyo-based company went public the same week Zynga did in December. Its shares have climbed 15 percent while Zynga’s have fallen more than 20 percent since their debuts. Now Nexon’s worth $7.9 billion while Zynga has a $5.5 billion market cap. → Read More
When party-planning service Punchbowl expanded into digital greeting cards last fall, it emphasized creating a beautiful experience, just as it did with its party invitations. But CEO Matt Douglas says that for some users, a key piece was still missing — you often don’t just want to send a card, but a gift too.
That’s where the company’s new integration with Amazon.com comes in. Punchbowl is now an authorized reseller of Amazon Gift Cards, so now you can include a digital gift card of between $25 and $500 (without an expiration date) along with your digital greeting. The news is coming out just barely before Mother’s Day (that’s this Sunday, for the delinquent among you), so if you need a last-minute save, this could be the right option. → Read More
Happy Friday! In less than one week, my colleagues and I (along with many, many others) will be flying to New York to gear up for one of the biggest conferences of the year, Disrupt NYC.
We have revealed the full agenda for the conference, as well as certain speakers and judges like: Adrian Grenier, MC Hammer, Michael Arrington, MG Siegler, Dennis Crowley, Marissa Mayer, Chris Dixon, Roelof Botha and tons of others. → Read More
Tagstand, the YC-backed company focused on making NFC a more mainstream technology, is getting some action at a pretty big black-tie event in New York this weekend which will see its technology used to enable some nifty actions for the 3,500 guests, like tapping to tweet, posting pictures to Facebook and registering “likes” for the cocktails they’re drinking. Sounds like (kind of geeky) fun!
→ Read More
In an interview published by China Daily today, Terry Gou, chairman of Foxconn, confirms the massive manufacturing company is making preparations for an Apple television set called iTV. Gou also states that neither development nor manufacturing has begun. Apparently, per China Daily at least, the television set will have an aluminum construction, Siri voice controls and FaceTime video calling.
This is the most solid report to date of the long-fabled Apple HDTV. The product has been rumored for the last several years. So far both Steve Jobs and now Tim Cook have called the Apple TV, the company’s set-top box, a hobby. But it seems the company is almost ready to turn its avocation into an occupation. → Read More
Docphin, a medical news and research service which we once described as a “Bloomberg for doctors,” has been growing quickly since its beta launch in November. Since then, the startup was selected to participate in Rock Health’s incubator and announced its forthcoming iPhone app. This month, the company also hit a major milestone: its nationwide expansion to 10 more academic medical centers, bringing the total to 13. And the company has redesigned its platform with HTML5, partnered with Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) to feature content from MedEdPORTAL, and introduced a number of new features to the service.
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Nielsen has been running some research into different demographics and their impact in the digital world, and their latest — quite possibly as a hat-tip to Mother’s Day this weekend — is a look at U.S. moms, a group that you might have assumed would be technical luddites, but actually are holding their own very well, thankyouverymuch.
It turns out that mothers are above average smartphone users, big fans of Facebook and Pinterest, and that the concept of a “mommy blogger” is actually a reality. The results also show that they are some of the most engaged consumers online.
→ Read More
Here’s a little something to file away for when your weekend gets dull — the Australian devs at Halfbrick have brought their premier flying-around-and-dodging-things game to its new home away from iOS.
Starting today, users looking to waste a few minutes playing Jetpack Joyride don’t need to look any further than Facebook for their fix.
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It’s always refreshing when a startup tackles a real-world problem instead of building another photo-sharing/local reviews/social calendar service. Case in point: TenderTree, a company that’s trying to improve the way people find reliable care for their aging family members, and then pay them for their work.
A recent participant in the latest 500 Startups batch with less than a million in funding, TenderTree is launching now into its beta, targeting the San Francisco Bay area to start. → Read More
Alexia said this was coming a few weeks ago, so it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, but… Viddy announced this morning that it has closed a $30 million Series B funding round. The new financing comes from investors that include NEA, Goldman Sachs, Khosla Ventures, and Battery Ventures, and the round closed just a few months after Viddy raised $6 million in a Series A round back in February.
The investment was made as the race to become the next “Instagram for video” heats up, especially after Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion just a few weeks ago. With that in mind, Viddy, Socialcam, Klip, Mobli, and others have been trying to attract users who wish to share their personal mobile videos with each other. → Read More
It was 15 years ago today that a computer – a conglomeration of transistors, memory, and storage media – could beat a world-class chess player. Called Deep Blue, the machine was part of a mission that culminated in IBM’s creation of a supercomputer that beat chess master Garry Kasparov two wins to one. While the concept is delightfully antiquated today (after all, IBM now makes a computer that can beat us all in Jeopardy and our phones can understand us to an extent unimagined even a decade ago), it was an important turning point in the climb down into the uncanny valley.
Deep Blue, in short, made computers personable. → Read More
The Olympus OM-D E-M5 is arguably the best micro four-thirds camera Olympus has to offer. We’ve had issues with past m4/3 iterations like the EP1 and EP3, like awful color reproduction and slow auto-focus. The same problems don’t persist here, and anything that impresses John on the photography front is a rare gem certainly worth consideration. → Read More
A color Kindle might be on the way. Industry watchdog publication, Digitimes, says Amazon will launch one in the second half of this year. The report goes on to state that the new models will forgo the traditional infrared touchpanels used in the current model for multitouch capacitive panels. Digitimes expects Amazon to adapt E Ink’s upcoming color EPD panels in their ereaders so don’t expect LCD displays.
This move, if true, would put the Kindle in a strange spot between a full-scale tablet and a tradition b/w ereader. Amazon has so far been very successful in marketing the Kindle’s grayscale screen against full color tablets like the iPad. The Kindle Fire showed that there is a demand for color ereaders as well, though. A color eink display might be the start of a larger content push from Amazon. → Read More
There are still some big question marks over what Nokia plans to do in tablets — a market where it is now possibly the only major smartphone maker yet to make a device — but at least Nokia is moving ahead with the launch of tablet-friendly services. Today, it said it would begin the global roll-out of Nokia Reading, a Windows Phone app originally announced back in February for reading e-books on a Lumia device.
The company says that initial countries that will get the app are France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain and the UK, with others following later this year. It is compatible with all four Lumia models: the 900, 800, 710 and 610.
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Just as we get news of some consolidation in the local content market in the UK, some news of expansion, too: Qype, the Yelp of Europe (and Yelp’s closest competitor in the region), today announced that the number of places reviewed on its site has reached 860,000, with the number of monthly unique visitors now at 25 million. It claims that this makes it the biggest reviews site in the region, about five times bigger than its closest competitor, the U.S.-based Yelp.
And while companies like Groupon are trying to move beyond the daily deal to become the platform for local commerce, Qype is doubling-down on the concept, expanding its own deals offerings with a free service to attract more local businesses to the concept.
→ Read More
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