3ones
The Simplest Stable Structure
January 25, 2010
GigaOM
Computers used to occupy entire floors of buildings. They quickly started to shrink, however, to occupy rooms, then desks and ultimately, laps. The laptop is now the default form factor for computing, with the smartphone occupying the emerging on ...
A profile of President Barack Obama that appeared today in the Washington Post, as part of a retrospective of his first year in office, raises some interesting questions about what kind of man President Obama is, and how he might differ from his...
Apple, as it is wont to do, blew the roof off with its first quarter earnings today. Some of the most interesting comments from the companys results call concerned Apples emerging market of enterprise mobility.
It appears that early skepticism ab...
August 6, 2009
MobileCrunch
We always liked the E71 and E71x, despite their being saddled with a less-than-gorgeous S60 OS. Well, the E72 is out there somewhere, being previewed by some very thorough Russians, and it looks like, in my opinion, that theyve fixed all the wron...
Well go ahead and make it clear, for the sake of those who missed the headline: This post is not something you want to peruse in your cubicle. Well try to keep the post itself pretty clean, but clicking through just about any of the links within ...
You and I can rail like a beplagued Job against the unfairness of the Apple store but do we ever get emails from Phil Schiller, Apple senior vice president? John Gruber does.
Gruber got an email from Schiller last night after the SVP talked throug...
John already gave you his “quick look” on the 8520, but a second look never hurts. Take into account the fact that my main phone is the BlackBerry Curve 8900 and you can see why I’m anxious to give you my thoughts on the latest Curve to hit the s...
When Android made its handset debut on the T-Mobile G1 back in October of 2008, a nasty bout of drama between Facebook and Google kept the former from developing on the nascent platform. 9 months later, Facebook took a look at the ever growing ...
Do the prices people are willing to pay for a phone app depend on the device or the type of app? A comparison of July prices in the iPhone App Store and the Android Market by app analytics firm Distimo found that across broad categories such as...
With T-Mobile’s latest Android device, the myTouch 3G, now readily available, Billshrink has done what they typically do and released a fancy comparison chart to help you, the consumer, make the right decision about which device to pick. Despite ...
Let me preface this post by saying that this whole “green movement” is a freaking scam. No company is making it easier for anyone to “go green” and buying a cell phone that’s made with recyclable materials doesn’t do anything for the environment....
What do we have here? The new hotness? mhmm. The HTC Touch Pro 2 is still a while away from being launched but somehow it was placed in front of a camera lens. Overall, it looks great with a clever eatching of the world on the backplate, a 3.5mm ...
August 5, 2009
TechCrunch
Digg has just announced that its going to begin rolling out Digg Ads, the sites innovative and experimental advertising product that invites users to vote on which ads they like best, over the next week. Digg first announced the new advertising pr...
Editor’s note: The following report comes from Don Dodge, who blogs at Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing and is a business development executive for Microsoft. TechStarsis a startup incubator that selects 10 teams and provides funding of $18,000 per...
As many of you have seen, the Internet entity known as Cookie Bottom took exception to my ripping apart of his Bing jingle last night. In response, he made a video mocking me. As I told him, that video was much better than the Bing one, and maybe ...
We'll go ahead and make it clear, for the sake of those who missed the headline: This post is not something you want to peruse in your cubicle. We'll try to keep the post itself pretty clean, but clicking through just about any of the links with...
A DDOS attack this morning took Twitter out at the knees and they were down for hours. Rival Facebook faced a similar attack (likely related), but for the most part managed to remain online. Some users couldnt access the site or post content, but...
Our commenters have proven themselves to be a brilliant bunch once again today. Perhaps you saw our best comment ever a few weeks ago. Thats followed-up today by a commenter, tenthings, who has deciphered the code Apple uses to reject apps. Funny,...
You always remember your first time, right? That heady rush, the embarrassment that turns into passion, that sense that this, this moment right now, is what you're living for. You could stay this way forever or die today - it didn't matter. I thi...
The timing, really couldnt be more perfect. Just as no less than Apple VP Phil Schiller has started making comments on the record about App Store rejections, Apple yanks another very popular one from its store. Sex Offender, an app to locate sexua...
When Android made its handset debut on the T-Mobile G1 back in October of 2008, a nasty bout of drama between Facebook and Google kept the former from developing on the nascent platform. 9 months later, Facebook took a look at the ever growing nu...
A lone messenger has emerged from the impenetrable fortress that is Apples App Store, and his name is Phil Schiller. Earlier this week, John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote a lengthy column detailing the plight of Ninja Words (iTunes Link), a sle...
Some people have the thinnest skins. Jonathan Mann, known on YouTube as “The Rock Cookie Bottom,” won a $500 contest that Microsoft was holding to encourage people to create a jingle for the new Bing search engine.
Naturally MG Siegler made fun of...
We speculated about this when we first reported on Microsofts recent announcements regarding its software-in-the-cloud strategy, and now its official: istartedsomething and Download Squad have confirmed that the domain name office.com is now a pro...
Remember that video contest Google announced back in June to try to get people to make videos showcasing the icon for its Chrome browser in creative ways? No? Well, the entries are in
Its all part of a plot to get you to recognize the Chrome browser icon. (That wouldnt be so much of a problem if more than 2.6 percent of you bothered to use it).
Most of them are lame, I gotta say. You can check them out here. I much prefer the commercials the pros made for Google. But there are a few gems. Below are th...
show all
Its no secret that group collaboration services like WebEx can be a major pain, particularly when they require proprietary browser plugins (some of them dont even support Macs at all). Team Apart, a new startup launching in private beta today, is ...
Yesterday I wrote about new startup Listia, which has an innovative way to help people give and get free stuff that works better than Craigslist. The idea is that you use credits to bid on items, which helps the giver by auto-selecting the winner ...
Do the prices people are willing to pay for a phone app depend on the device or the type of app? A comparison of July prices in the iPhone App Store and the Android Market by app analytics firm Distimo found that across broad categories such as ...
I know what you're thinking, old man: "These kids today with their space rockets and their Yoo Hoo and their customizable notebooks! When I was their age I had a Trapper Keeper with cars on it (the Transformers ones were always sold out) and I did...
Update to the big ongoing Twitter outage that has brought the service down since at least 6:00 am California time today: Its a DDOS attack. Thats way more exciting than run of the mill outages that have plagued the site since forever. Stay tuned....
Sorry, but social networks simply aren't cool anymore among the 15-to-24-year-old crowd. I'm 23, and have all but quit Facebook (I stopped tweeting a few months ago), but that's more of a function of me being an anti-social cad than anything els...
OLX and hi5, both challengers to dominating juggernauts in their respective fields (online classifieds and social networking), have teamed up to expose each others admittedly vast but geographically spread audience to one another. OLX says it curr...
Twitter has been down for about 40 minutes now (since about 6 am California time), and counting. No word on their status blog about the outage at all (Update: they now say Site is down - We are determining the cause and will provide an update shor...
Yesterday I had an informal meeting with Best Buy executives at the Fuse Capital offices in Palo Alto (Fuse is running a new Best Buy venture fund) to discuss the CrunchPad. Best Buy and Fuze have been big supporters of the project, and we had a g...
Twitter was featured on the BBCs Newsnight programme last night. There werent any great revelations about the service, however the confirmation from the CEO that London remains the top Twitter-using city in the world is pretty interesting. This wa...
Whoever manages to change the nature of content display on the Web from a search problem to a recommender problem will reap tremendous rewards.
That quote, by Greg Linden, the man behind Amazons recommendation system, is the dogma of Directed Edge, a new Y Combinator-backed startup in the recommendation space. Amazon, of course does product comparisons, but theres no reason recommendations shouldnt be a part of news consumption, music consumption, social networking, basically everything we do on the web. An...
show all
WPP subsidiary Millward Brown Optimor has released its highly regarded annual brand ranking BrandZ Top 100 (PDF), which identifies the worlds most valuable global brands as measured by their dollar value.
Topping the list are Internet giant Googl...
Over the last few months weve been tracking a lawsuit between online marketing guru Jeremy Schoemaker and a Google employee named Keyen Farrell. This week comes news that Schoemaker has settled the case with Farrell, though details are scant. Mo...
Coupon site Savings.com just got a redesign and a new board member: Mahalo CEO (and TechCrunch50 co-host) Jason Calacanis. Theyve broken $10 million in revenue after just a couple of years, says Calacanis, and are crushing it in the deals space....
A few weeks ago, we wrote about the contest Microsofts new search engine Bing was holding to find a catchy jingle for the product. Today, they have announced the winner. Catchy is one word for it. Another is awful.
Sure, the song will get stuck in...
Its something of a rite of passage for college freshmen. You arrive at your new dorm room and, after a few moments of excitement, come to the unsettling conclusion that you have either A) brought so much junk that your room will soon resemble a r...
July 2, 2009
MobileCrunch
Well, thats a surprise. Rumors had pointed at Sprint to be the home of the Hero here in the states - but there it sits in the FCC database, packed to its big ol chin with ATT-friendly 850/1900Mhz bands.
[Via EngadgetMobile]
Crunch Network: TechC...
I think the image is pretty self explanatory.
VZW via BGR
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Ever since OS. 3.0, the latest operating system for the iPhone, launched on June 17, prices among the top 100 apps in the iTunes App Store have been fluctuating wildly as developers push out apps taking advantage of all the new features in the O...
While it was reported in late May by the Guardian that O2 had all but locked up the Palm Pre, the UK rag is once again claiming that O2 will be the exclusive carrier for the webOS device. Earlier rumors that Palm would announce a carrier next wee...
Oh, patents. Companies file you all the time, often coming to nothing, yet you still mystify us for some reason. A iPhone-related patents have been floating around the Internet this morning; theyre sure to interest you for dozens of seconds. Take...
So Im going through my twitter stream a while back and I see several links from some former colleagues of mine, pointing to a new iPhone app called ColorSnap, by Sherwin-Williams. So what right? There are a million (ok, fifty thousand) iPhone apps out there—what’s so interesting about this one?
Well, two things. One, it was developed by my former employer, Resource Interactive, for whom I have the utmost respect and must also disclaim. Two, it is a tool of sorts, which I seem to be more interested in these ...
show all
July 1, 2009
TechCrunch
After months of dismal unemployment numbers, this mornings continued growth in the unemployment rate from 9.4% in May to 9.5% for the month of June reinforces the fact that the U.S. is still very much in the midst of recession. Additionally, the ...
July 1, 2009 - the day the music wars started in earnest. Last night the guys from Dovecote Records, a small music label based in New York, were hanging out at their local bar. Employees from file sharing startup LimeWire showed up to have a party...
You may have noticed that Twitter has started hyperlinking hashtags. Those are words preceded by a # which denote what the Tweet is about and makes it easier to search for Tweets about specific topics and events. For instance, try searching for ...
Ever since its redesign a few months ago, FriendFeed has been one of the standard-bearers of the real-time web. Thats because while a lot of sites claim to be real-time, FriendFeed is one of the few that actually updates continuously as data comes...
Last fall Google launched a revamped version of its Blog Search, converting the sites frontpage into a automated news portal similar to sites like Techmeme. It has its fair share of issues (for one, its subject to the same problems of automated g...
Yesterday, we wrote about what Facebook was planning for the next major release of its iPhone app, version 3.0. The big update will contain 15 new features, probably none bigger than the addition of event management to the app, finally. But there ...
An internal AT&T memo that was leaked today is full of very impressive number regarding the iPhone 3GS — numbers that once again show why AT&Ts exclusive contract with Apple to sell the iPhone in the U.S. is so important.
The iPhone 3GSs l...
A little over two hours ago, a Google employee posted a note in this Google Groups thread indicating that Google App Engine was seeing elevated Datastore latency and error-rates, as well as elevated serving error-rates. He noted that the problem b...
What is the best way to sift through a stream of information? The list view seems to be the most popular because it is information-dense and easy to scan, but it can be overwhelming. More visually appealing ways to manage data are needed. Twin...
Ever since OS. 3.0, the latest operating system for the iPhone, launched on June 17, prices among the top 100 apps in the iTunes App Store have been fluctuating wildly as developers push out apps taking advantage of all the new features in the OS...
Its one thing when Internet companies like Facebook adopt OpenID, its another when a giant retailer like Sears Holdings Corporation embraces it. Sears has just announced that it will enable over 1 million monthly MySears and MyKmart visitors to us...
comScore has aggregated some data based on its World Metrix audience measurement service and put together a study on social networking worldwide. Surprisingly, it appears that the Russians are more engaged with social networking than the rest of t...
Really curious to find out how this is done exactly, but someone somewhere has managed to change a real trending topic on Twitter - #MrsSlocombe - into something childish, as you can tell from the screenshot above. Strangely enough, when you do a...
From the rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic file: The new MySpace exec team has promised changes (we havelaid the groundwork for an exciting new chapter of innovation for MySpace). And theyre delivering. A couple of hours ago they changed ...
Twitter has long had an official Facebook application that allows users to update their Facebook status with tweets. Its quite useful for those of us who dont want to have to spend all day updating multiple services with the same messages. The ap...
While not every tweak to YouTubes system deserves a post, this one is pretty significant, though very straightforward as well. First, the 1GB file limit for YouTube videos has been doubled to 2GB; this is a boon to many users who have been upload...
Our Real Time Stream Crunchup is only a week and half away (get tickets here). Weve been working hard to pull together the best startups, investors, engineers, and marketers developing products and platforms which take advantage of real-time dat...
Its Twitter day at Microsoft, apparently. Not only did the software giant announce that it would start adding tweets to its Bing search results, the company actually started officially using Twitter today.
To be clear, Microsoft had a rather large...
May 19, 2009
TechCrunch
Microsoft's Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie made some interesting predictions on the future of cloud computing at J.P. Morgan's Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in Boston today (see below for the full transcript). Ozzie says that whil...
We are winning!
- Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, declaring victory in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, adding We have them surrounded in their tanks.
South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster pulls an al-Sahhaf by dec...
How quickly they grow. Remember when Twitter was just a little pipsqueek, with less than 10 million monthly unique visitors to its site worldwide? That was back in February, 2009. Fast-forward to April, and Twitters U.S. visitors alone reached...
Not too long ago, Google added voice recognition to their iPhone search application. Not one to be behind the times, Yahoo! has gone and immediately done the same.
Well, thats what we should have been able to say. Instead, Yahoos voice recognitio...
Biz Stone, in a blog post today, gave us a little insight into Twitters stances on advertising. Theres been a lot of speculation on how Twitter should and could advertise but Stone lays out a few ways where Twitter could monetize via ads and comm...
Michael Sheridan has resigned as CFO of music startup Project Playlist, weve confirmed. This comes just a couple of weeks after CEO Owen Van Natta resigned to take the top spot at MySpace.
Sheridan is a former News Corp. executive and was also pre...
The future of the weekly city paper is the daily blog. Hints of this future can already be seen at Village Voice Media, which owns and operates 15 of the top weeklies in the country, including the Village Voice, SF Weekly, and LA Weekly. Bill Je...
YouTube, a site that was once notorious for pirated content and user-generated videos that were practically useless to brands, has made great strides in the last few years as it looks to appeal to its growing number of advertisers and content part...
Trusera, a health 2.0 community where users can share their stories about how they’ve dealt with health conditions, is officially closing its doors on May 27, according to a blog post on the site. We originally reported on Truseras possible shutd...
Verified Applications on Facebook Recommendations from Sandra Liu Huang on Vimeo.
As we predicted last night, Facebooks new application directory and Verified Apps program are now live. We knew about most of the features that were coming with...
Yes, there is very likely a new iPhone coming very soon. Probably to be unveiled at WWDC and launched sometime in July. But it's easy to forget those are all still rumors because Apple obviously won't comment on anything and so the information is ...
GM has declared that the Chevrolet Volt is the linchpin in the company's future and we can see why after spending a good amount of time behind the wheel of an early test mule. The experience met every expectation we had about the extended-range e...
The Laptop Hunters commercial campaign that Microsoft is pushing seems to be working. Young people in the 18-34 demographic see a laptop running Microsoft Windows as a better value for the money than an Apple laptop running OSX. Apple had dominate...
Okay, this one took a little longer than I predicted, but VOIP service Foonz is suspending its service. More than a year ago, its chief marketing officer decided to shift focus to another startup. That wasnt a good sign. Foonz has been using u...
Distimo, a young Dutch company that is entering the slowly but surely saturating market of mobile application distribution and monitoring services, has just released an interesting report about Apples App Store. It contains some noteworthy finding...
So I'm looking at this and I find this. That's right: it's an entire website, frequently updated, dedicated to pictures of computers in movies in television. Did you know they used a Twentieth Anniversary Mac in Children of Men? No, you did not an...
MSNBC anchor Carlos Watson noticed during the presidential campaigns and election of President Obama last year that a new generation of media consumers had emerged. The Change Generation, Watson calls it (wonder where he got that name from), is educated, edgy and curious about the world and news, and in contrast to the yuppies from 20 years ago, doesnt find news solely in the New York Times or on CNN. This generation cares about pop culture, social activism, fresh opinions and of course, change. So Watson ...
show all
Craigslist is suing South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster in the states federal court, seeking declaratory relief as well as a restraining order with respect to criminal charges he has threatened against the company and its executives. Th...
Open source developer Bruno Lowagie is about to set a remarkable precedent in the F/OSS world by restricting any government body in his and my home country, Belgium, to use any product that makes use of technology originally developed by him. More...
T-Mobile USA announced today a new campaign dedicated to helping people save money on their wireless service, and the carrier is not only using the lovely Catherine Zeta-Jones as the face of the campaign again, theyre also giving a huge vote of co...
Looks like Windows Media Center, that hub for video and audio which I've never used, is getting full Netflix streaming support. This is good news for those of you running HTPCs with Vista on them no need for an extra layer or front-end, just open...
There are not many startups that set out to save peoples lives - unless you count the generic use of things like Twitter to get the word out fast about an earthquake or some other life-threatening event. But then again there arent that many aiming...
As a Kindle owner, I love the fact that Amazon released an iPhone app to allow me to continue reading my content even when I dont have the actual Kindle with me. Of course, the experience of reading on the iPhones much smaller and back-lit screen ...
Youd be hard pressed to find someone who tries the online streaming radio service Pandora that doesnt like it. In fact, some users like it so much that they actually ask for ways to pay the company, to make sure it stays alive (something that has ...
Remember when MySpace lost three key execs before the whole chaotic reorganization? They announced their departure in March. And weve now confirmed that they are closing a substantial round of funding, even before theyve picked a final name for th...
We knew it was coming, but we werent sure when. Weve gotten word that Facebooks Verified Apps initiative, long awaited by developers since the program was first announced last year, is finally ready for the masses. Developers are getting notifie...
The hardest thing about being an American journalist in China is discovering local entrepreneurs. Part of the reason is that there is just so much going on. There are so many intriguing expats and returning Chinese nationals in Beijing’s start-up ...
Say you have a group of individuals who all want to tweet from one account right now, thats a pain. You have to give everyone the password to the one account and have them log out of their own account and into this new one to use it. And even then, how do you know who is sending what tweet? Youd have to manually insert your own Twitter name at the end of your post or something along those lines. Now theres a much easier way, and it comes thanks to a demo app.
Tata-tweet allows you to feed multiple Twitter ...
show all
As the worlds most popular sport, soccer (or football as it is called in most of the world) has no shortage of devout fans, and with the World Cup coming up in just over a year, that popularity is set to skyrocket once again. So its no surprise that social networks dedicated to the sport have emerged that are looking to capitalize on this massive market. One of these is Footbo, a soccer-centric social network that has just closed a $1 million funding round from Pitango Venture Capital.
Since launching la...
show all
The poll results from yesterday are in, and it isnt even close. 80% of you think Craigslist (46 million US visitors) is more important than South Carolina (4.5 million residents). Background on the conflict is here.
The numbers are obviously not ...
In news that should come as a surprise to no one, troubled news aggregation site Tailrank is officially headed to the Deadpool, as its parent company looks to sell off its assets. The company behind the site has decided to cut its losses and to ...
Oh, Internet! This here is a silly video showing a future version of the Amazon Kindle, the Kindle 9 XXXD. Why, it's so big it can't possibly be practical to use!
And, for the record, I could have sworn I saw this same conceptexamine what a curre...
Daimler got that 10% stake in Tesla that was announced today for $50 million, says a source with knowledge of the deal. Theyve actually taken 9% (they announced nearly 10 percent and the post money valuation is $550 million. Our source also says t...
The Google has released new version of Reader thats been tweaked a bit. Google has added a new set of tabs in the trends page called Friends Trends, where you can see which friends share the most content and whose shared items you read.
Another ...
Earlier today, we were at Yahoos End of the 10 Blue Links event. Basically, it was their state of search gathering, similar to the Searchology event that Google had last week. But there was a key difference, as anyone who was following along with ...