February 14th, 2011

Experiments In Realtime News: The Eqentia Streams

When it comes to realtime news, the prevailing wisdom these days is to let your friends tell you what to read through Twitter or Facebook. Instead of editors, people are using these social stream sto filter their news, and a whole bunch of apps (like Flipboard) are tapping into that to present your social news feed in more appealing ways. But a Toronto startup called Eqentia is approaching the… → Read More

December 30th, 2010

Pew Shows 65% Of People Pay For Digital Content; Mostly Music, Software, And Mobile Apps

The Pew Internet organization put out results of a survey on how many people pay for digital content online. The study found that 65 percent of people online have paid to download some form of digital content or for a subscription to a digital media service. The survey excluded physical goods bought online and was focussed only on digital content such as music, software, news, and other online… → Read More

December 7th, 2010

Salesforce Chatter Goes Freemium

In its attempt to bring social streams into the enterprise, Salesforce is taking its Chatter messaging service and making it freemium. Unlike most freemium services which start out free, and then add on premium features for a price, Salesforce is going in the opposite direction. Chatter started out as an additional $15/user/month service, but perhaps the uptake wasn’t what CEO Marc Benioff had… → Read More

November 12th, 2010

Automated News Comes To Sports Coverage Via StatSheet

Here come the robo sports journalists. While people in the media biz worry about content mills like Demand Media and Associated Content spitting out endless SEO-targeted articles written by low-paid Internet writers, at least those articles are still written by humans. We may no longer need the humans, at least for data-driven stories.

A startup in North Carolina, StatSheet, today is launching… → Read More

September 13th, 2010

Pew Research: More People Got Their News Online Yesterday Than From A Print Newspaper

The Pew Research Center, which regularly surveys U.S. consumers about their media consumption habits, put out a report which shows that more people are getting their news online than from print newspapers. In response to a survey question asking people where they got their news yesterday, 34 percent answered online versus only 31 percent from a daily newspaper.

If this doesn’t sound like news… → Read More

August 25th, 2010

IBM Fingers Web Apps As Culprit Behind 36 Percent Rise In Enterprise Security Threats

IBM put out a new report (embedded below) on security threats to enterprise computer networks today from its X-Force security research group. It found a 36 percent increase in security vulnerabilities, with Web applications being the main culprit. Web apps with security exploits accounted for 55 percent of all disclosed vulnerabilities.

One of the biggest threats are hidden attacks using… → Read More

August 4th, 2010

Microsoft And Salesforce Agree To Agree On Patents (For A Fee)

It’s no secret that Microsoft and Salesforce just plain don’t like each other (remember when Microsoft communications head Frank Shaw basically said that Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is obsessed with them?). In fact, the two companies have spent the last year suing one another over patents. But today they’re announcing that they’ve settled the suit. But Microsoft couldn’t help but get one final jab… → Read More

July 27th, 2010

Adobe Buys Swiss Company Day Software For $240 Million

Adobe is strengthening its product portfolio with its intention to acquire Swiss firm Day Software, which makes Web content management systems aimed at marketers. Adobe announced an all-cash tender offer for Day’s shares. The purchase price is approximately $240 million.

Many of Adobe’s products, such as Illustrator and Photoshop, are used already to create marketing materials for companies. … → Read More

July 14th, 2010

Product Management Software Company Atlassian Takes A Huge, $60 Million First Round Of Funding From Accel

It is not often that a company’s first round of venture funding comes in at $60 million and eight years after it was founded with $10,000 worth of credit card debt. But Atlassian, which was founded in Sydney, Australia in 2002, is taking its first venture money today from Accel Partners. The company pulled in $59 million in revenues in its fiscal year ended June 30, 2010, and has been… → Read More

July 14th, 2010

Zoho Projects Gets A Bug Tracking Application

Zoho’s project collaboration product and Basecamp-rival, Zoho Projects, is getting a much needed feature today: a Bug Tracking tool. Zoho Projects is a team collaboration and project management application that allows teams to plan, track and collaborate on everyday activities and big software projects with external customers.

Tracking software bugs and then prioritizing these bugs and fixing… → Read More

July 1st, 2010

Google Pays $700 Million In Cash For Flight Info Provider ITA

Google is now in the flight information business. The search giant just announced it is paying $700 million in cash for ITA Software, an essential provider of flight information to airlines, travel agencies, and online reservation systems.

Travel is a huge segment of search and online commerce. Purchasing ITA signals Google’s intention to build out its travel search in a major way. A… → Read More

June 25th, 2010

Salesforce Countersues Microsoft In Patent Brawl, Brings David Boies To The Fight

In response to a patent lawsuit filed by Microsoft last May, Salesforce is countersuing with its own patent infringement claims. But a mere countersuit isn’t enough for CEO Marc Benioff. He is also bringing a big-gun lawyer to the knife fight, Microsoft’s nemesis from the antitrust trial of the 1990s, David Boies.

During Salesforce’s last earnings call, Benioff obliquely referred to Microsoft… → Read More

June 16th, 2010

Yammer 3.0 For iPhone: Now With 100% Fewer Crashes

At the risk of pissing off our new office neighbors, I have a confession to make: I loathed the Yammer iPhone app. Don’t get me wrong, I love Yammer, and find it absolutely vital to our work. But the app was easily the least stable of the dozens of apps I have  on my iPhone. It was so bad, in fact, that I’ve been accessing Yammer through mobile Safari in recent weeks. But that’s why I’m happy to… → Read More

May 20th, 2010

Accordion Players Step into the L.A. Spotlight

Get ready to unleash your inner Weird Al Yankovic and sign up for the Roland U.S. V-Accordion Festival! → Read More

May 17th, 2010

Shinobi Ninja video game iPhone app

As more and more musicians and entertainers discover ways to use iPhone apps to reach their fans, we see an increasing amount of gadgets and games. Some of them are good, some of them are ehh. Earlier this year, the Brooklyn-based rock-rap group Shinobi Ninja launched a fun and amusing game called “Brooklyn to Babylon: Shinobi Ninja Attacks!” The game takes music and video and presents… → Read More

May 10th, 2010

Bezos And Mohr Davidow Back Stealthy Paperless Billing Startup Doxo

Paperless billing is the digital future that never quite fully arrives. Even among people who otherwise embrace the digital lifestyle, and pay their bills electronically, many find it difficult to give up on the paper statement. They feel they need it for their financial records or it serves as a physical reminder to pay the bill. And meanwhile, businesses are stuck sending out paper bills… → Read More

April 22nd, 2010

Windows 7 Pushes Microsoft's Profits Up 34.5 Percent; Bing And Xbox Live Kicking It Too (Slides)

Another healthy quarter for Microsoft, which saw a 34.5 percent boost in net income to $4 billion, on top of a more modest 6 percent increase in quarterly revenues to $14.5 billion. The return to growth was driven largely by sales of Windows 7, which were up 28 percent to $4.4 billion. (Windows Live is included in that, but it doesn’t yet produce much revenue, although Microsoft is about to → Read More

April 14th, 2010

In Time For Chirp, Apigee Adds A Twitter API Dashboard For Developers

Thousands of developers rely on Twitter’s APIs to build their apps and Websites. In time for this week’s Chirp conference for Twitter developers, Apigee is coming out of public beta and launching a special dashboard to keep track of the Twitter API.

Apigee is a Google Analytics for APIs. For developers who rely on data from other sites and companies, it monitors how much data they are using… → Read More

March 29th, 2010

HP and Dragon Training

How to Train Your Dragon, from DreamWorks Pictures opened on Friday and promptly blew fire over most of the competition. Numerous outlets reported the film was Number 1 at the box office this past weekend, despite somewhat slower ticket sales than expected. → Read More

March 17th, 2010

Don't Call Tech Support. Try Orkin Instead!

Someone passed this post along to us, and since our Chinese is limited here in CrunchGear-land, I’m afraid we can’t vouch for it. The video contained may, in truth, provide the recipe for a lovely London broil for all we know, so take it with several healthy grains of salt. But at least the basic premise is amusing. It seems that HP in China received a number of complaints about their… → Read More

March 16th, 2010

A Historical Recreation of a Copy

Last year, Omega released a special edition timepiece to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo astronauts voyage to the moon. In 1969, the men in the space capsule wore Omegas so the firm decided to recreate that bit of history with a contemporary product. But what if Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong hadn’t worn Omegas at all? What if they had worn copies? And Omega knew that the men… → Read More

March 16th, 2010

Get Ready to Take Over the Coffeeshop

Roland just started shipping the AC-33 Acoustic Chorus Guitar Amplifier. This cool gadget is world’s first battery powered amp built specifically for acoustic guitar.

With a 30-watt amp and 5 inch speakers, you’re not going to rock Knebworth with this thing. But if you’re trying to impress the college girls at the local coffee house with your re-interpretation of “Your Body is a Wonderland” or if… → Read More

March 15th, 2010

What happens first: Team USA wins the World Cup or people start paying for online news?

Would you pay for access to The Huffington Post? The Guardian? Or, gasp, CrunchGear? People in the news business are trying to figure out how to get by, let alone make a profit, and a recent Pew survey suggests that people have no idea what’s going on. Six in 10 Americans now get at least part of their news online, but the question remains: are people willing to pay? → Read More

January 28th, 2010

PSA: How to filter out iPad news using Google Reader

In case you missed it, Apple announced the long-awaited iPad yesterday. And while there’s been no shortage of coverage by just about every technology-related blog on the planet, perhaps you’d like to be able to use Google Reader without every third post being about the device. If so, there’s a very simple search trick you can use to filter out all the iPad-related hoopla. → Read More

January 7th, 2010

Brightcove Comes To Yahoo Connected TVs, But Web Video Is Still Stuck In Widget Hell

If you own an Internet-connected TV that is compatible with Yahoo’s TV widgets (AKA, a Yahoo Connected TV), you may soon start seeing video produced for the Web on your TV. Brightcove announced today that media publishers using its online video platform can now distribute their videos through Yahoo’s Widget Engine, which powers the widgets on Yahoo-Connected TVs. These TVs are made by Sony… → Read More

December 8th, 2009

Why The Magazine Industry Wants Its Own App Store. It's All About The Data.

The magazine industry is falling over itself over a new shiny object. It wants to remake its product for a new class of digital tablets with color screens and touch screens. Today, a group of big publishers—Condé Nast, Time Inc., News Corp. Hearst, and Meredith—announced a joint venture to create standards for digital magazines to be read on tablets, e-readers, Web phones, and the like. … → Read More

October 25th, 2009

LawCrunch: Some (more) ideas on why Nokia sued Apple

As many of you are aware, Nokia filed a lawsuit against Apple last week in the Federal District Court in Delaware. Nokia’s complaint alleges that Apple has infringed on 10 of Nokia’s patents for various, “fundamental” GSM, UMTS and wireless LAN (WLAN) technologies. In particular, the patents cover wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption. Nokia believes that all 10 patents have been… → Read More

October 8th, 2009

U.S. Senate: It's cool to jam cell phones in prisons

Oh, U.S. Senate. Just when we thought you had turned your collective attention to the plethora of incredibly important issues to tackle (read: healthcare, 2 wars, global warming, education, etc), you go and pass the Safe Prisons Communications Act of 2009. → Read More

October 5th, 2009

Atlassian JIRA 4.0 Released: OpenSocial Comes To Enterprise

JIRA, a product from Atlassian, began its life as a simple alternate bug-tracker, and has since evolved into a popular and robust product and issue management tool. JIRA 4.0, to be released tomorrow, has made several enhancements and additions including an improved dashboard, JIRA Query Language (JQL) for enhanced search features, and activity streams. The most notable new feature is the… → Read More

July 31st, 2009

Free Parking: Black Hat conference attacks electronic parking meters

As we move farther and farther into the digital age, we begin to see some serious problems with an all-digital lifestyle. Take parking meters, for example. As much as a pain as it is to root under your car seat looking for loose change to feed the meter, there aren’t too many ways to avoid actually putting money into a traditional meter. (Or maybe there are. I haven’t bothered to investigate… → Read More