It’s only my third official day on the job at TechCrunch, but it’s been a pretty awesome time thus far. We saw an email come through the wires that stopped us in our tracks during our Amazon coverage today. It was technology-related…but not.
We have some great readers at TechCrunch, but this particular reader has an interesting story. He’s not in Silicon Valley, he’s in Afghanistan… → Read More
Today the USA television network has announced a partnership with Yap.TV to power its mobile social application. Yap.TV is one of the hottest social TV apps on the App Store, offering users the chance to chat up television shows in real time.
It’s basically a souped-up Twitter client for TV, and now all the same cool functionality will be available for USA programming.
USA’s Yap.TV-powered… → Read More
Well this stinks. Space Shuttle Discovery is in the closing stages of preparation for its final flight ever. After that I guess American astronauts will have to hitchhike their way into orbit, which is pretty lame, I think you’ll agree. The launch is scheduled for November 1. → Read More
You go to Japan and their vending machines are pretty much Prothean technology come to life. You go to a Wal-Mart in Florida and the vending machines are powered by steam. Is that changing? Maybe. The local Fox affiliate has a fun story about Next Generation Vending and Food Service, a Mass.-based company that specializes in, yes, next generation vending machines. Biometrics, credit cards… → Read More
It’s no longer illegal under the DMCA to jailbreak your iPhone or bypass a DVD’s CSS in order to obtain fair use footage for educational purposes or criticism. These are the new rules that were handed down moments ago by the U.S. Copyright Office. This is really big. Like, really big. → Read More
Wikileaks vs. the U.S. Military continues. You’ll recall that the U.S. Army labeled the Web site a “potential force protection, counterintelligence, operational security (OPSEC), and information security (INFOSEC) threat to the US Army.” Now the Army has arrested the person who hundreds of thousands of documents, including that pretty gruesome video from a few weeks back, to the site. The person… → Read More
Another day, another EA Sports prediction, World Cup edition. According to the latest game, EA Sports FIFA World Cup 2010, MIGHTY SPAIN will win the tournament. That’s funny, because as I write this Spain can’t even score a goal against South Korea… → Read More
The iPad is a huge hit in the United States Congress. I mean, passing any sort of meaningful banking reform is apparently out of the question with these guys , but there’s always time for the iPad. Just amazing, really. → Read More
The Cousins were mulling over a broadband tax, but the new Government has put a stop to that. (Now they’re considering using some of the BBC license fee to fund broadband development.) The idea was to charge people 50p (around $0.70) per month to fund the expansion of broadband into rural areas. Would such a move work here in the U.S.? Would you be willing to pay, say, $1 per month, paying toward… → Read More
We can observe some 170 billion galaxies in the known universe, and I’m thoroughly convinced that this planet, in this solar system, in this galaxy, is the dumbest one of them all. Quite an accomplishment! Wikipedia has come under fire, from complete dunderheads, for hosting “pornographic” content. What type of pornographic content? You know, things like the photo of a NAKED MAN AND WOMAN in the… → Read More
This is probably a case of where the idea is sound but humans will no doubt muck everything up. Thirty-three states here in the good ol’ U.S. will allow military and overseas citizens to vote via the Internet beginning with the mid-term election in November. This is being done in part to ensure that overseas voters’ votes, you know, count. I don’t know how many of y’all have ever lived overseas… → Read More
It’s all a bit like Mass Effect. The U.S. Air Force successfully launched the X-37B unmanned spacecraft yesterday, but the question that nobody knows the answer to: what’s it for? The Air Force refuses to say what the X-37B’s mission on beyond something along the lines “we wanted to see if it works.” OK, but do you plan on doing with it? “Sorry, classified.” Neat. → Read More
Up until a few minutes ago, I had never heard of “geocaching.” One quick YouTube video later, and I’m all, “That sounds amazing.” If only I were 10 years old, then I could join the Boy Scouts and get my very own geocaching badge, the Scouts’ newest, most tech-y badge available. → Read More
You know how you read stories that say the U.S. loses X-amount of jobs per year due to piracy, or that this or that industry loses zillions of dollars per year because of piracy? The Government Accountability Office just released a new report that says that all of those reports are flawed and are completely worthless. In other words, the next time you hear the MPAA say “Downloading that DVD rip… → Read More
Well this is a strange one. I just received in the mail (that’s “real” mail, not e-mail) an official letter from the National Association of Secretaries of State encouraging me to take advantage of all these fancy ways of keeping up-to-date with voting information. The letter took great pains to stress that the program, which includes e-mail and SMS alerts, doesn’t use any… → Read More
We haven’t really progressed beyond the year 2004, have we? With respect to copyright news, I mean. The latest: the “US Copyright Group” has filed suit against 20,000 BitTorrent users, with a cool 30,000 lawsuits now pending. If you total all the various different “Hollywood” (you know what I mean) lawsuits, that means that 80,000 Americans now face some sort of traffic-lawsuit. → Read More
There’s a certain amount of pride in seeing a country pump out something like the new F-35B Lightning II fighter jet. At $113.5 million per aircraft, it’s about as far away from the meaning of the word “inexpensive” as possible. It makes you think, well, if we can afford things like that, why can’t we afford things like this? But, whatever. The entire purpose of this post is to watch a… → Read More
Just hilarious. Apparently the U.S. intelligence community thought Wikileaks so odious that it labeled it a “potential force protection, counterintelligence, operational security (OPSEC), and information security (INFOSEC) threat to the US Army.” Good ol’ Wikileaks, bringing down the U.S. government. → Read More
Four percent of U.S. gamers admit to pirating video games, according to a new NPD report that apparently we’re not cool enough to get directly from the NPD. I’m going to guess that more than one of you fall into that four percent. → Read More
There’s a pretty interesting report that was just published today entitled “How much information?” It was put together by the Global Information Industry of the University of California at San Diego. It looks at the year 2008 and tries to quantify how much information the average American consumes across all forms of media: TV, newspaper, Web sites, radio, you name it. When you crunch all the… → Read More
I have written about gadgets and tech and whatnot for four long years now, but this is by far the greatest thing I have ever seen. It’s called the Freedom Tray, and it’s going to rock your world… with freedom. (Freedom haters need not apply.) → Read More
We’re stretching for stories today, believe me. Hence: it’s about time we update the way we conduct the U.S. census. Someone else said that, not me. Like, don’t you think it’s a little quaint to go from door to door, with a pen and paper in hand, and ask, “Hey, um… how many people are you? Did you go to college? Do you have a job? Cool, thanks.” Why not, you know, make use of electronic… → Read More
Japan’s NTT DoCoMo, the country’s biggest mobile phone subscriber with over 50 million subscribers, is considering fully entering the American cell phone market – as early as next year. Various Japanese media are reporting that the company plans to offer phones featuring DoCoMo’s proprietary mobile web service “i-mode” in the USA (the picture shows phones from their Japanese summer line-up). → Read More
A bit of a corollary to yesterday’s story of an ACLU lawsuit designed to ascertain more information about laptop border searches. The Obama Administration has put a whole bunch of new restrictions on the practice, some of which should may the “don’t search me” brigade. → Read More
The ACLU doesn’t like that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection can search through all your electronic personal effects—laptops, including all the data therein—so it has filed a lawsuit to back up an earlier Freedom of Information request asking, essentially, “what gives?” Is it reasonable for Customs to search you at the border? Sure. But is it reasonable for Customs to search… → Read More
How great is this: in 2003, the Pentagon and intelligence agencies had a plan on the books to launch a cyberattack on Iraq that would have zapped the country’s money supply. In other words, Saddam Hussein wouldn’t have had any money to pay his troops or whatever. Three cheers for destruction! → Read More
True story: I didn’t even know my Social Security Number until my freshman year of college, when it was used as my dorm building’s PIN. Type in the PIN, and the little gate would open. It seemed a little odd at the time, yes, and today’s news that, with a little elbow grease, someone can guess a person’s Social Security Number quite easily, well, that doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence… → Read More
Some hard science-related news for you now. Try this: name a scientist. Go ahead, name one, any one. If you’re like me the first name that pops into your head is Bill Nye or Michio Kaku. And if you’re also like me you can name several others. The average American? Not so much. USA Today ran a little poll a few days ago asking Americans to name a scientist, and a whopping 23 percent of respondents… → Read More
Good for Microsoft, kicking the American worker when he’s down. President Obama means to close a loophole in the taxcode that allows corporations to “deduct… cost at a high tax rate and report… profits at a low tax rate.” In other words, win-win for the corporation at the expense of the United State Treasury. You know how Microsoft’s Steve Balmer said he’s deal with the closing of this… → Read More
We here at Crunch may use the Internet for fun little things, like Twitter or Spotify (I’ve tried the U.S. version—it’s pretty great), but it’s only a matter of time till the Internet becomes just another place where governments can fight each other. Cyberwar, etc.! → Read More
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