RIM, predictably, has said it will not make any special deals, although if (as-yet unconfirmed) reports are true, that’s just what they did in Saudi Arabia. I don’t envy RIM, but this is one of the known risks of being a multinational corporation.
India Issues Ultimatum To RIM: Open Up By August 31 Or Else
RIM, predictably, has said it will not make any special deals, although if (as-yet unconfirmed) reports are true, that’s just what they did in Saudi Arabia. I don’t envy RIM, but this is one of the known risks of being a multinational corporation.
Sprint Epic 4G launching August 31st
Earlier this month we reported that my favourite of the Galaxy S variants — Sprint’s Epic 4G — would see a release… yesterday. Clearly, this didn’t happen. So, when can we expect the QWERTY infused beast? And you know what else they told me? The price: expect to fork out $350 for the privilege, with a $100 MIR bringing it down to a still-rather-hefty $250.
So, given this new information, are you still keen? If I lived in the US, you know I would be. S-AMOLED QWERTY phone? Try and keep me away!
Video: Slim n sexy Android-powered Dell Thunder
Apple releases iOS 4.0.2, patches PDF vulnerabilities (and sends jailbreakers back to the drawing board)
When the genius minds of the iPhone hacking community discovered that just about every iPhone around was vulnerable to a PDF rendering bug that allowed for one-click jailbreaking, the geek world celebrated — until someone pointed out that this was really, really scary. Deep running system controls, accessible via a browser exploit? As our Spanish-speaking friends around the world would say: No bueno.Fortunately, Apple didn’t just kick back and hope nothing bad would happen.
U.S. Cellular launching the HTC Desire on August 27th
Being the sixth largest carrier in the U.S. is no small feat — and once you’re there, you’ve gotta make sure to roll with the times to keep your customers for defecting. U.S. Cellular seems to realize that Android is all the rage right now, and has been embracing it well: they’ve got the Samsung Acclaim (exclusively, even!) already, plans to launch a Galaxy S variant in October, and, according to their people, “two LG Android-powered phones following closely behind”.But wait, there’s more! On August 27th, U.S. Cellular will be launching the HTC Desire to the hungry hands of their 6.2 million customers
RIM Reportedly Bows To Pressure From Saudi Arabia, Hands Over Blackberry Access
RIM’s response was a stolid “relax,” but the public response appears to be different from the internal one, if reports from inside the company are true. What the Saudi Government has praised as “positive developments” are reportedly concessions by RIM giving that government unprecedented access to certain RIM resources, giving it the power to eavesdrop on any Saudi Blackberry user.
How Is 3D TV Doing? Some Data From Japan
Think what you want about 3D TV, but it’s here already, and we’ve just seen the beginning. But are people actually buying the devices, as a few dozen models are now available in the US, Japan and other places? The Nikkei, Japan’s biggest business daily, recently investigated the 3D TV market in Nippon. What they found out could be of interest for the US and European markets as well.WePay Raises $7.5 Million For Hassle-Free Group Payments Platform
WePay, a Y Combinator
backed startup that aims to take the hassle out of group paying, has raised $7.5 million in Series B funding led by Highland Capital Partners with existing investor August Capital participating in the round. The startup previously raised funding last December from an all-star roster of angel investors including Max Levchin, Ron Conway, Dave McClure, and Steve Chen. As we wrote in our initial coverage of the payments platform, WePay is an easy way to collect, manage and spend money for groups. WePay’s platform based around a prepaid debit card system, which makes its accounts easy to set up as well as more flexible when it comes to setting up group paying.
This Is How I Read TechCrunch: Without Comments
As regular readers are undoubtedly aware, I have a sort of love/hate relationship with our commenters. Well, okay, it’s more hate/hate. I find it amusing, but I realize not everyone does. Some people say they avoid our stories just so they don’t feel the need to take a shower after reading our comment section. I have good news for those people: there’s an extension for that. Remove TechCrunch Comments is a Google Chrome extension made by user hrparmar. He actually made it back in January, but we’re just seeing it now. And it’s awesome.
Microsoft Sends Us Crayons, Fails To Tell Us IE9 Beta Launches Sept 15
. Given my extensive sleuthing skills it did not take me long to attempt to plug the domain into my browser, only to repeatedly meet a “401 – Unauthorized” error that said I had invalid credentials. My attention waned and I went off to play with my new crayons.And Of Course, Here’s The Twitter Movie Trailer
And it’s good.
As you might expect, the Twitter movie trailer created by Next New Network’s
Barely Digital group, explores the founding of everyones’ favorite 140-character social network. It opens with tweets such as “My hair is sad today”, “My computer is being a fart butt right now” and “Just left my wife and kids. W00T!” Then we get into the backstory. “I need to create a way to blog that is as random and incoherent as writing on a bathroom wall.”The Motorola Droid 2 Gets Released And Ripped Apart In The Same Day
The Droid 2 hit VZW stores earlier today, but yet the mad scientists over at iFixit already got their hands on one and tore it apart in the name of gadget pr0n. The process didn’t revel any terribly surprising although while the battery is rated at the same 1390 mAh, even though Motorola is claiming twice the battery life. That’s neat. Click through to iFixit for the rest of the gory pictures. Axon Logic Hackintosh Tablet May Just Out-iPad The iPad
Back in April we heard word of an affordable hackintosh tablet called the Axon Haptic. We were skeptical, since all we had was an anonymous tip and a render — something any 3D concept artist could have cooked up in an hour or two. But now we know that the Axon Haptic is real, you’ll be able to pre-order it this week, and yes, it runs OS X.Read More
QuakeCon: Carmack Has Rage Running At 60 Frames Per Second On The iPhone. Whoa.
Cyber-Cute Overload: Quadrocopter Drone Has Its Own Little Home
Oh no! I’ve been wrong all this time! The Robocalypse won’t be a sudden proliferation of hunter-killers and corpse-eating tanks — it’s going to be a Cutezkrieg! Japan will be, I am afraid, the first to fall. They are already a slave to the kawaii.
This little bugger is called the Scandicraft, and it lives in that mailbox until there is a perimeter breach, at which point it emerges and flies around, looking for the intruders and transmitting a live video screen. Irresistible (and terrifying).
This little bugger is called the Scandicraft, and it lives in that mailbox until there is a perimeter breach, at which point it emerges and flies around, looking for the intruders and transmitting a live video screen. Irresistible (and terrifying).
First 720p videos from iPhone 4 hit YouTube
Truly a blockbuster. Maybe this guy should move to some place where they have… you know, objects.
Really, though, it’s not bad. Obviously you’re getting a ton of smear and skew, as you will with any “HD” device of this size, but it’s also just as good as any $100-$150 pocket cam you’re likely to find. We’ll have our own video and image quality tests in our full review, of course. Watch on YouTube
Really, though, it’s not bad. Obviously you’re getting a ton of smear and skew, as you will with any “HD” device of this size, but it’s also just as good as any $100-$150 pocket cam you’re likely to find. We’ll have our own video and image quality tests in our full review, of course. Watch on YouTube
iFixit tears apart the iPhone 4 in graphic detail
Microsoft taking a loss on Kinect?
“My Phone Is Off For You” – how to show you care in this modern age
Linux: the people’s product
Here’s the Dell Streak’s US retail packaging (maybe)
TRON controllers will be available for purchase
Mixtape watch keeps track of time, reminds you of that one road trip and that sweet mix you made that everybody totally liked and you played it like 30 times
Facebook Has Been Massively Underreporting Twitter App Users — By Over 6 Million
AppData is a goldmine of information about third-party applications on Facebook. With it, you can see stats like: FarmVille has 63.9 million monthly active users — making it nearly three times as large as the number two app on Facebook, Texas HoldEm Poker (also a Zynga game), which has 28.5 million monthly active users. But there was always something a little wonky about certain areas of AppData’s data. For example, they showed that Facebook for Android only had 67 monthly active users — yes, 67. But something happened this past week that seemed to correct the data, and it exposed one new massive Facebook app: Twitter. As Inside Facebook (another site under InsideNetwork) noted
yesterday, some change Facebook recently made appears to have corrected the stats for a number of apps. The aforementioned Facebook for Android shot up to 4.7 million MAU from its 67 — a 7 million percent increase. The other big increase in the top 10 gainers? Twitter, which went from it’s previously reported number of just over 400,000 users, to nearly 7 million — a change of over 1,300 percent. And the app still appears to be growing pretty fast. The Twitter app’s own page on Facebook now confirms this new number.Opera Hooks Up With MegaFon To Expand Its Mobile Browser Reach In Russia
has struck a deal with Russia’s federal mobile operator OJSC MegaFon under which MegaFon’s special package “Unlimited Internet with Opera Mini” will be distributed to all Russian territories. That may not sound like much at first glance, but you have to consider that MegaFon boasts over 53 million mobile subscribers, spanning all seven Federal Districts of Russia.
Furthermore, MegaFon serves some 39 percent of all mobile Web traffic in Russian territories, according to recent research (it was first in Russia to run a 3G network based on UMTS). The operator says internal statistics have shown that Opera Mini subscribers effectively generate twice the traffic than any other MegaFon user.
Twitter For iPhone Quick To Add Multitasking And Retina Display Support
In fact, while other huge apps on the iPhone, such as Facebook, lag behind in supporting the newest iPhone functionality, Twitter is one of the first to implement some of the useful new features.
Zuckerberg: Facebook Revenue Estimates Of $1.1 Billion “Not So Far Off..”
with Facebook founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The conversation touched on a range of topics including the proliferation of social gaming, the argument for instituting Facebook Credits across all games, and why Zuckerberg is no longer afraid of Twitter. It also shed some light on Facebook’s revenue numbers: Zuckerberg said that estimates that Facebook would make between $1 and $1.1 billion this year “are not so far off in either direction that it’s causing us any pain…” So what did he mean by that? Zuckerberg says that revenue estimates last year were lowballing Facebook’s revenue stats to the point that it was hurting the company. Now that’s changed, at least to the point that Facebook isn’t seeing any adverse effects from analyst guesses.
Zuckerberg Admits He “Paid Too Much Attention” To Twitter
with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the state of the company. It’s worth reading in its entirety for thoughts about the Platform, Credits, gaming, and the company’s financials. But one thing that caught my eye in particular was his thoughts about Twitter. Over the past year and a half, Facebook has been under a lot of criticism that it is drifting away from its core service and into a more Twitter-like state, where short status updates rule and all information should be public. When Facebook failed to acquire the company in late 2008, Twitter’s influence on the look and feel of Facebook became more and more apparent. But Zuckerberg says that the time of Twitter infatuation is now over.
“As good as I think they are, I think I personally just paid too much attention to it,” Zuckerberg tells Inside Facebook’s Justin Smith. Why was he so focused on the rival? Their growth rate — it had Facebook worried.
Google Counters Apple’s HTML5 Showcase With HTML5Rocks (Yes, It’s Really Called That)
. Google and Apple are arguably the two biggest companies attempting to push HTML5 forward. Notably, both also dominate updates to the WebKit rendering engine (with both Safari and Google Chrome use). But both also seem a bit at odds with HTML5 because both have popular mobile platforms that use native applications not coded with HTML5. In recent weeks though, the two companies (which are in the middle of a war with one another) seem to be trying to show that each is fully committed to the open web.
Google Translates “Call Us For Free” To “Skype” In Italian
Google Translate is also known for its occasional snafus. For example, an English to French translation of “videos on Vimeo” previously resulted in “des videos sur YouTube.” Another example of a wonky translation took place when Kai-Fu Lee, president of the search giant’s China operations, left the company. of “call us for free.” The phrase returns in Italian as “Telefonare gratis con Skype.” The reverse translation results in ‘call us for free.’
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)