India Issues Ultimatum To RIM: Open Up By August 31 Or Else

The ongoing drama concerning government access to secure Blackberry communications is coming to a head in India, where RIM was given a final compliance date today. If a satisfactory agreement is not reached between the smartphone company and the Indian government, the latter will shut down the former’s email and messenger communications altogether, resulting in Blackberry users being reduced to internet and voice access.
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?

Gizmodo report today that we can reserve the phone from August 13th, for an August 31st release date.
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!

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Video: Slim n sexy Android-powered Dell Thunder

Dell have produced two Android-powered handsets to date: the uninspiring Aero and the enjoyably large Streak. Neither of the phones, however, have had true mainstream appeal. It seems the third time, as they say, is a charm, as the Thunder is a sexy piece of kit. We first saw the Thunder back in April, when it leaked alongside two other sexy-lookin’ handsets. At the time, we were unsure of the authenticity of the leak, but now it appears that it was at least 33% real… and 100% gorgeous.

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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.

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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

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RIM Reportedly Bows To Pressure From Saudi Arabia, Hands Over Blackberry Access

Even when you’re one of the largest mobile companies in the world (and certainly the largest for the business elite), things change when you find yourself at odds with a sovereign nation. Or a few. That’s the situation RIM is in right now as they attempt to reconcile their longtime promise to users (uncompromising encryption and security) with the unforgiving world of global politics. As you’re likely aware if you’re reading this post, RIM has been the center of government ire in a few countries (most prominently the UAE, India, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia), which have threatened to ban Blackberry devices if RIM doesn’t provide them reasonable access to users’ data.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Microsoft Sends Us Crayons, Fails To Tell Us IE9 Beta Launches Sept 15

Today, as I walked into TechCrunch headquarters after this morning’s Google Android event, I was approached by a sweaty man who had clearly just ridden his bicycle across town. He’d come to deliver a large, white box that had only a single marking: a tiny Internet Explorer sticker. “This will probably be mediocre,” I said to myself. “Goofy” would have been a more accurate prediction. Inside, I found a handful of confetti along with an array of crayons, colored pencils, and paints that would put some pre-schools to shame. There was also a single, not-so-mysterious note with the text www.beautyoftheweb.com. 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.

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It’s The Google Countdown!

Here’s a nifty little Google Easter Egg on this fine Friday. If you go to the Google homepage and click the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button with no query entered, a countdown timer will appear below the buttons. As of right now it stands at 1765472, with each second ticking off the last number in that sequence.

Some quick math (with Google’s help) tells us that 1,765,472 seconds equals a little over 20 days. What happens in 20 days? It could be the end of the world, when Google becomes self-aware, or 2010. You decide.

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It’s Raining FAIL. Widespread AT&T Outages Reported In San Francisco.

Today started out like any other, which is to say, the AT&T connection on my cellphone was somewhat working, depending on where I was positioned in my apartment. It sucks, but things like this are a fact of life that AT&T customers have grown accustomed to in cities like San Francisco and New York. But this afternoon I started getting an abnormal number of messages from friends over email, IM, and Twitter because they apparently couldn’t text or call me. I tried to use my phone, and sure enough, no dice.
Calls are working sporadically, but the AT&T data network in San Francisco seems to be completely borked right now. There is obviously a lot of talk on Twitter about this right now. Everyone, it seems, has the same problem, “Could not activate cellular data network.” I should mention that it’s raining in San Fracisco today, so perhaps that’s to blame. I know how hard it is for AT&T to be reliable on a regular day, so rain is apparently completely out of the question.

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ZOMG The Google Phone Is “Like An iPhone On Beautifying Steroids”

We told you the Google phone was confirmed. And now some Googler’s seem to be confirming it, too. There is a lot of chatter on Twitter about Google employees with HTC-built unlocked Google Phones running Android 2.1. And the devices look to be coming out in January.
We noticed a Twitter message from a Google Program Manager, who writes “Stuck in mass of traffic leaving work post last all hands of 2009. ZOMG we had fireworks and we all got the new Google phone. It’s beautiful.”
Another guy, Jason Howell, says he had his hands on the device, which he says is made by HTC and is running Android 2.1: “The new Google Phone runs on HTC hardware. I saw it w/ Android 2.1. Homescreen has new visual enhancements like animated desktop wallpaper.”
“Supposedly, Google employees were given tons of these phones today. unlocked,” he adds.

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Google Suggest Becomes More Universal

Search is getting more visual. Today, Google is adding universal search elements to Google Suggest, the drop-down list of suggested keywords that appear under the search box as you type. Now you may find suggestion box filled with results from universal search, which may include weather, flight status, definitions, calculations, currency conversions, and more. Universal results tend to have a visual component, such as the sun-and-cloud icons that appear for weather-related searches or the clock for time-related searches.
Google says it is all about making search even faster.  It is also releasing a new extension for Chrome called Quick Scroll which helps you find the part of a web page that triggered a search result.  So when you do a search and then click through to a results page, a black box pops up in the lower right-hand corner of the screen which will take you exactly to the place on the page which most closely matches your search query.  Once again, this is designed to get you to the information you are looking for faster rather than just using the “find” function in your browser.

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Mint Study Shows That Holiday Shoppers Are Back In Action

Feel like this holiday season is a bit cheerier than last year’s? You’re not alone. According to some new data from personal finance site Mint (which was acquired by Intuit for $170 million earlier this year), the holiday season has been accompanied by a major bounce in consumer spending. After a dismal shopping season in 2008, many retailers specializing in everything from electronics to high-end clothing have seen big jumps in the last few months. In a post called ‘The Return of Retail: Holiday Spending 2009′, Mint has illustrated these trends in a number of attractive infographics (we’ve included a few below).

So where does this data come from? To your everyday consumer, Mint is great for a lot of things — it can help you manage your budget, find deals on credit cards, and plenty of other other good stuff. But Mint can also look at aggregate spending trends to see how the economy, and even individual retailers are doing.

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Want Everyone To See Your Credit Card Transactions? Of Course You Do. Meet Blippy.

As the Internet matures, slowly but surely everything we do in the real world is going social. But there’s a limit to how much information we can explicitly share on all the various services. A new service, Blippy, launching today in private beta, has an interesting way to take something you do everyday, buy things with your credit card, and automatically push those transactions online for others to see and interact with.
Yes, I know this is a controversial idea — that’s part of what makes it potentially a great one. Imagine being able to see everything your friends buy with a credit card as they do it. This not only tells you what kind of things they’re actually into (rather than someone just saying they like something), but also other information like how cheap they are, as well as where they actually are at a given time. There is actually a lot of data tied into the transactions we make, and Blippy takes that and makes it social.

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Threadsy Now Talks Back To Facebook

TechCrunch50 startup Threadsy debuted its all-in-one, web-based communications client a few weeks ago and received positive reviews from the judges and audience, making it as a finalist at the conference. Three weeks later, the startup is already innovating and improving upon its product by launching additional support for Facebook.

Threadsy takes all of your online communication and aggregates it into a single service. All of the messages directed at you (email and Twitter @replies) are put into a single stream of messages, called the “inbound” column. And all of the activity streams that you follow (Twitter, Facebook, etc), is put into a single activity stream, the “unbound” stream. The result is a universal communications platform. Threadsy, which is backed by August Capital, is still in private beta and we have 100 invites for TechCrunch readers here.  More...

Jitterbit Releases Version 3.0 Of Its Open Source Data Integration Platform

Jitterbit, a open source data and application integration company, has launched the 3.0 release of its product. The new release includes the debut of the ‘MX’ Enterprise version of Jitterbit, which the company says is designed for especially large enterprise customers. MX joins the normal Enterprise version (which should be suitable for most businesses), as well as the Jitterbit Community product, which is available for free but doesn’t come with support.

In layman’s terms, Jitterbit helps applications and systems that wouldn’t normally be able to ‘talk’ to each other do just that, and it also helps automate some of the more tedious processes involved in data management, like transferring data between applications. Users map out which fields in various applications are linked, and then Jitterbit automatically handles the synchronization regardless of which protocol is being used. More...

Why Google Wave sucks, and why it doesn’t matter

Now that Google Wave is trickling out into the water supply, I’ve been sucked into “playing” with it alongside FriendFeed, Yammer, Skype, and email. Erick Schonfeld insists on discussing a project we’re readying, and unfortunately I’m able to sign in from my iPhone. The FriendFeed direct message interface is not exposed on the iPhone version, and Skype makes me feel stupid for entering a ping and then watching my battery indicator drop while waiting for some signs of life. In this environment Wave suddenly is acceptably lousy. More...

The Week In iPhone Apps: The Beautiful Game

Don't listen to the pasty dude with the Arsenal shirt who lives downstairs—FIFA 10 isn't the only good thing to land in the App Store this week. Not even close. More...