Doing hard things
“I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.” — Walt Disney — Later this week, Hulu's content will no longer be available ...
Tumblr Ditches Anonyblogger Ban Amidst User Revolt
That was fast. Yesterday, blogging service Tumblr moved to ban five accounts the site's admins judged were “harassing” users — the so called “anonybloggers.” But after receiving “several hundred res...
HP earnings dip nearly 10%, will cut salaries
Hewlett-Packard is facing the reality of the recession, and finally slipped up on its earnings. — For the fiscal first quarter, the PC maker earned a profit of $1.9 billion, or 75 cents per share. ...
Split decision on major Vista Capable ruling; decertification of class action could bring case to a close
U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman issued a key ruling in the ongoing Vista Capable class action lawsuit that could bring the case to a close.
DEMO Gets Desperate: Shipley Out, Marshall In
Things are changing at DEMO, the startup and product-launch conference owned by IDG that competes with our own TechCrunch50 conference. After 13 years, conference organizer Chris Shipley will make wa...
Google demo offline GMail webapp for iPhone: Video Demo
Vic Gundotra, VP of engineering at Google, demonstrated an offline-capable webapp for the iPhone 3G this morning that allows full access to a user's GMail even while the handset is in airplane mode.
CBS: Things Are Bad, But We Can Pay Our Bills; Dividend Slashed
CBS had a lousy fourth quarter, but that's not news: Wall Street expected it, and Les Moonves and company met revenue expectations while beating earnings. — The real news: The company is trying to r...
Editorial: Ten reasons why Windows Mobile 6.5 misses the mark
The talk this week at Mobile World Congress has been largely positive about Microsoft's latest iteration of its smartphone UI, Windows Mobile 6.5. Still, some of us at Engadget (well, one of us, at l...
Twitter creator Jack Dorsey illuminates the site's founding document. Part I
Twitter's prehistoric document, circa 2000. An early temporary name was “Stat.us.” — Credit: Jack Dorsey. — Sitting in the Flickr archives is a nearly 10-year-old document uploaded a couple of ye...
GeeMail puts offline Gmail on your desktop
GeeMail is a standalone Gmail client that runs on Adobe AIR. It looks and feels exactly like Google's Gmail, or at least how it did before the introduction of labs last year. It's big feature is tha...
Testing A More Integrated Search Experience
Search and Trends in Twitter for a fraction of folks. — Twitter Search has been growing ever more popular despite the fact that it lives on a subdomain of our site. Today, we've placed Search and T...
Google wins Street View privacy suit
A couple in Pittsburgh that sued Google claiming that the Street View on Google Maps is a reckless invasion of their privacy has lost their case. — Aaron and Christine Boring sued the Internet searc...
Tremor Media Raises $18 Million For Web Video Ads
Web video ad network Tremor Media has raised $18 million in series C financing. — Meritech Capital Partners led the round. Previous investors include Canaan Partners, Masthead Venture Partners, and...
Five Years of Yahoo! Search
Five years ago today, Yahoo! launched its own search engine. Since then, we've introduced a host of new features, vastly improved the relevance of both our algorithmic and sponsored results, and lear...
The Apple Mafia
In Silicon Valley, Apple's quirky culture goes far beyond its walls. — Whether it's Apple's iPhone or Yahoo!'s home page, travel to the far corners of the world and the products created by Silicon V...
Dell's Mini 10 Packs a Punch
Many of you have been keeping track of the Mini 10 since we previewed some details at CES. Starting today, we'll begin taking preorders from customers in the United States through QVC. U.S. online a...
Intel/Nvidia Catfight Is About More Than IP
Intel on Monday night filed suit to stop graphics chipmaker Nvidia from tying its graphics chips to certain future Intel CPUs. The suit filed in the Delaware Court of Chancery alleges that Nvidia doe...
Apple Slows Down Mac Upgrades, in Sync With Economy
Apple isn't going to roll out a revamped Mac desktop anytime soon, because you wouldn't buy one anyway, analysts say. — Tough economic times, a shrinking desktop market and strong notebook sales mak...
Microsoft's IE 8 incompatibility list: 2,400 major sites (and counting)
In an effort to improve Web users' compatibility experience, Microsoft added a new, user-selectable Compatibility List to the Release Candidate test version of IE 8 that the company released in Januar...
Six ways to make Web 2.0 work
Web 2.0 tools present a vast array of opportunities—for companies that know how to use them. — Technologies known collectively as Web 2.0 have spread widely among consumers over the past five years....
The Blog That Ignited a Privacy Debate on Facebook
By now, the three-day maelstrom surrounding Facebook's attempt to re-jigger its terms of service to give it more control over users' content has settled down a bit: the social networking service resto...
Facebook begins testing ads for third-party applications
Up until today, Facebook has been content to let third-party developers make money however they wanted to, without offering its own services to help them do so directly. Instead, it's just been makin...
Update on Terms
A couple of weeks ago, we revised our terms of use hoping to clarify some parts for our users. Over the past couple of days, we received a lot of questions and comments about the changes and what the...
Verizon Wireless: 4G LTE trials showing 50 to 60 Mbps download rates
Verizon Wireless said Wednesday that it is testing 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) service with the aim of launching commercial service in 2010. Verizon Wireless said the 4G LTE network in field trials ...
Intel files suit against Nvidia
We have just learned that Intel filed suit against Nvidia late last night in which it alleges that the four-year old chipset license agreement the two companies signed is not valid for Intel's current...
Comcast's Customers Give The Cable Guy the Boot
Even in the worst of times, people are supposed to hold their TVs close to their hearts: Turn off the heat? Sure. But don't you dare take my cable away. — So this can't be good: Cable giant Comcas...
Day 3 - The Pirate Bay's ‘King Kong’ Defense
The third day of the trial started with prosecutor Håkan Roswall who presented his updated/amended charges to the Court, taking into consideration the developments of yesterday (50% charges removed). ...
Hulu pulls content from TV.com
Hulu.com has pulled its content off CBS-owned TV.com, which relaunched last month, sources confirmed on Tuesday. — Attempts to access episodes of Heroes and other content from NBC and News Corp. par...
Antitrust Pick Varney Saw Google as Next Microsoft
Feb. 17 (Bloomberg) — Christine A. Varney, nominated by President Barack Obama to be the U.S.'s next antitrust chief, has described Google Inc. as a monopolist that will dominate online computing serv...
Mozilla, Skype support EFF's case for iPhone jailbreaking
In a filling with the US Copyright Office, Mozilla and Skype have added their voices of support to a request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright ...
Oh, the humanity: Windows 7's draconian DRM?
Once again, we see fanciful claims about ludicrous DRM schemes in the new Windows operating system, but a closer look suggests that Windows isn't to blame after all. Most users, in fact, won't even n...
Yahoo Search Share Rises Again... And Google Falls!
Last month we reported a potentially important change in search-market share trends: After years of steady decline, Yahoo's domestic share numbers (YHOO) had increased for five months in a row. Well,...
Once Again: Making Search Results Better Isn't An Antitrust Violation
And, here we go with more ridiculous antitrust lawsuits — this time against Google. You may recall last fall, the NY Times ran a silly article focusing on one small company supposedly as evidence of ...
CAPTCHA-crackers breach Windows Live Hotmail yet again
Another day, another CAPTCHA crack, and this time it's Microsoft once again scrambling to pull its pants back up. The company will undoubtedly resecure Windows Live Hotmail, but CAPTCHAs are a techno...
Canon releases 10 cameras in one night - thanks, Canon
Just when I thought it was safe to relax and read a little bit, my inbox lights up with a damn tidal wave of point-and-shoots. If you're in the market, you'll be doing more in-depth research and of c...
NINTENDO DSI LAUNCHES APRIL 5 IN THE UNITED STATES
New Portable System Offers Customized Gaming Experiences — Nintendo pioneered hand-held entertainment in the '80s and made it fully mobile with the Game Boy™ video game system. Now, Nintendo is tra...
Jeff Dean keynote at WSDM 2009
Google Fellow Jeff Dean gave an excellent keynote talk at the recent WSDM 2009 conference that had tidbits on Google I had not heard before. Particularly impressive is Google's attention to detail on...