Tablet shipments below lofty expectations, says IDC
Global tablet shipments in the first quarter fell 28 percent from the fourth quarter and failed to hit expectations, according to research firm IDC. — Specifically, tablet shipments were 7.2 million...
Apple could test limited iTunes HD+ 1080p movie service
Apple as early as this fall may choose to test the waters for 1080p video sales through its ubiquitous iTunes service, AppleInsider has been advised. — Thus far, 1080p HD content has largely eluded ...
Netflix launches a new $7.99 DVD-by-mail plan
While streaming is all the rage these days, Netflix hasn't given up on DVDs entirely: The company has quietly launched a new page where users can sign up for an unlimited DVD-by-mail package that matc...
Mac OS X Lion: This Is Not the Future We Were Hoping For
It breaks my heart to say this, but Mac OSX Lion's interface feels like a failure. Its stated mission was to simplify the operating system, to unify it with the clean experience of iOS. That didn't ...
Oracle win would strain Android growth
Oracle is reportedly already asking handset makers to pay as much as $20 per Android phone — Will handset makers maintain their dedication to Android if they have to pay to license it? That's the q...
Here's How Spotify Plans To Invade the U.S., With Facebook's Help
Spotify should finally get to the U.S. this month. Then what? — We can get some sense by taking a look at the marketing materials the European music service is showing off to potential advertisers.
Google+ accounted for 35% of Tweeted news links last week
The Twitterverse was in a flurry this week, as early adopters and tech enthusiasts excitedly dissected Google's brand new social network, Google+. — According to the Pew Research Center's Project fo...
RIAA Starts Going After BitTorrent Sites
Historically the RIAA's litigation campaigns have focused mainly on individual file-sharers and P2P-software and services such as LimeWire. — Unlike their counterparts at the MPAA, BitTorrent sites ...
Google To Buy Mobile Loyalty Card Startup Punchd
We've just gotten word that that Google plans on acquiring digital loyalty card service Punchd. The team, which consists of developers Reed Morse, Xander Pollock and Niket Desai (and formerly Grantla...
Twitter Ads Will Get Harder To Ignore: “Promoted Tweets” Coming To Your Timeline This Summer
As Twitter raises even more money, it's getting more serious about making money. The service is set to start showing ads in users' “timelines” within the next month, following through on plans it has...
Tech experts exit White House
When President Barack Obama took office, he brought with him a pack of technology advocates with impressive résumés and ambitious visions. They wanted to improve the government through the use of Int...
Anonymous leaks cache of sensitive security data from FBI contractor
Hacking group Anonymous has today released an archive containing what it claims to be private emails and databases of IRC Federal, a contractor that partners with the U.S. Department of Defense, Depar...
Apple snags 50% of handset industry profits ahead of first 100M iPhone year
In less than four years, Apple went from not making a dime on handset sales to commanding approximately half of the industry's profits, and is now poised to set the bar even higher by shipping 100 mil...
LinkedIn Surpasses Myspace For U.S. Visitors To Become No. 2 Social Network; Twitter Not Far Behind
Professional social network Linkedin surpassed Myspace in terms of traffic to become the No. 2 most visited social networking site in the U.S. in June. LinkedIn, which has seen a resurgence …
Heads Up! TechCrunch Will Look A Little Different Next Week
Next week we'll be rolling out significant enhancements to TechCrunch. A new design and a new logo will be the first thing you'll notice. But behind the scenes we've made significant changes to the ...
Twitter co-founder Ev Williams on Blogger & blogging's future
When the rumors of Google retiring the Picasa and Blogger brands hit the web last week, it sent me down memory lane. It made me think about blogging in general and how it had evolved. I wanted to wr...
John Carmack: ‘Unquestionable’ That Mobile Will Surpass Current Consoles
id Software's John Carmack has taken a greater and greater interest in mobile gaming over the last couple years, and the rate at which the hardware iterates in the smartphone and tablet space has allo...
Mozilla Labs Launches ‘Web Activities’ Experiment, Lets Web Apps Talk To Each Other
Mozilla has just posted an update to its Labs blog, where it shows off some of the new projects that it's been working on (which sometimes serve as previews of features that eventually get baked into ...
Inside Google's User Experience Lab: An Interview With Google's Marcin Wichary
Marcin Wichary's fascination with the relationship between humans and machines began at an early age. As a boy in Poland, he was mesmerized by the interaction between arcade patrons and the video gam...
Google confirms Google Apps users will gain Google+ access
The recent release of Google+ has since launch seen Google Apps users screaming out for access. Now thanks to Google's president of enterprise, Dave Girouard, we know its coming.? — Girouard confir...
I Flunked My Social Media Background Check. Will You?
Your next job application could require a social media background check. Odds are, you have no clue what that means. Nobody does. It's new and scary and probably scours the Web for pictures of you ...
Has Dropbox set the stage for a privacy revolution?
Life has been something of a rollercoaster ride for Dropbox lately. In May, the consumer cloud-storage service was hit with an FTC complaint based on allegedly misleading contractual language about d...
Although Many Investors Are Spinning, Turntable.fm Has Not Yet Picked A DJ
Although many investors are spinning for the chance to invest in Turntable.fm, the hot music startup has not yet picked a DJ, despite reports to the contrary. Business Insider claims that Turntable h...
The BlackBerry PlayBook is my favorite tablet
Research In Motion launched its first tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook, on April 19th of this year. Since that point in time — and even before, courtesy of reviews — the slender slate has been lambast...
As Web IPOs Hit, Few Share the Spoils
Silicon Valley's technology boom is giving a lift to the venture-capital industry. — But many of the gains are being disproportionately reaped by brand-name venture firms, which are benefiting from ...
Google Hangouts gives the “Alive Web” a big boost
A few weeks ago when I fell in love with Turntable.fm, I wrote about the emergence of a web that was alive. Driven by constant connectivity, this “Alive Web” is a web that is experienced when and if ...
Apple Wants to Beat HP's WebOS Sharing Feature with Something Cooler
When HP first introduced the TouchPad's “Touch to Share” feature earlier this year, fans and industry pundits alike applauded them for their innovation. Well, it appears that Apple has been working o...
How We Use the Tools We Choose: A Week of Worldwide Usage Data
Does the type of device that you use change the way that you consume and create information? Does it alter the types of content that you look at? We were curious, so we took a look at a week of Bitl...
How Sony accidentally did the right thing with Light Peak
Sony and Thunderbolt — they go together like Memory Stick and SD, ATRAC and MP3, or Betamax and VHS. Consequently, Sony's high-speed I/O implementation is similar to Thunderbolt, but it isn't Thunder...
Netvibes Debuts Powerful Social Analytics Platform For Brands And Agencies
Netvibes, a company that provides social media dashboards and news aggregators for brands and agencies, is debuting a powerful new analytics platform tonight. Netvibes' new social analytics and monit...
With Google+ (And A Tweak For Analytics), The Social Sharing War Is Fully On
Google and Facebook are at war. This is old news. They both want to be the center of the Internet — but there can be only one center. For a while, it looked like things were quickly shifting Facebo...
Open-Xchange launches Facebook contact exporter
Open-Xchange, a company making open-source software for e-mail and other collaboration tasks, released a tool today to help people migrate extract contact information their Facebook friends have share...
Wow! Mobile is now 2% of global GDP
The worldwide mobile industry should bring in $1.3 trillion in 2011 and will represent about 2 percent of global gross domestic product, according to data released today by analyst Chetan Sharma. In ...
Amazon Put In An Order For 1.2 Million Tablets, More Than Any Other Company Besides Apple
Amazon is feeling more optimistic about its tablet than any non-Apple company, DigiTimes reports. — Sources in the supply chain told DigiTimes how many tablets each big company was ordering.