Soon Microsoft Voice Command may be a thing of the past. TellMe Networks was acquired in March 2007 and now the company is rolling the service into their mobile phone operating system. TellMe will be rolled into Windows Mobile 6.5 this fall. The TellMe solution will have a one-button, voice-activated feature that gives access to text messaging, traffic info, phone dialing, GPS, and search through Live.com. For those who want to have TellMe, it can be downloaded on Windows Mobile Marketplace or come pre-installed from handset selling companies.
Nintendo-heads rejoice! On Amazon.com, Energizer is selling a charge station that can charge two Wiimotes at once without even having to take off the silicon sleeves. Price tag is $50.
Amit Chowdhry | April 30, 2009 | 412 views | Comments Categorized under Fujitsu, Toshiba
As many of you all are aware, Fujitsu will be transferring their hard drive business to Toshiba. A new division of Toshiba will be created to take over Fujitsu’s business called the Toshiba Storage Device Corporation. After that, Fujitsu’s manufacturing plants will be called Toshiba Storage Devices Philippines and Toshiba Storage Devices Thailand. Toshiba Storage Device Yamagata Corporation will then take over Yamagata Fujitsu Limited.
Toshiba Storage Device Corporation will handle the R&D of the hard drives and the Toshiba parent company itself will do all the marketing. About 80.1% of Toshiba Storage Device Corporation will be owned by the parent company by July 1. This leaves Fujitsu with 19.9% shre for the time being. But in December 2010, Toshiba will take over the whole storage device division.
Bobby Waltkins stated that the Z5600 all-in-one PC will be arriving October 23, 2009 with Windows 7 loaded. In the past, Microsoft was hinting that Windows 7 won’t be arriving until the end of January 2010. Acer even stepped up the offering by stating that any Vista units purchased 30 days prior to the October 23 release of the computer will be eligible for a free upgradeto Windows 7. Its your move on the release statements, Mr. Ballmer.
Peter ‘Magic’ Johnston invented an iPhone application called the iSnort. iSnort is an application that simulates cutting and snorting cocaine. “Go on… give it a toot… it’s virtually addictive. I Can’t Believe It’s Not Cocaine,” states the description of the iPhone application.
The application can be downloaded on to jailbroken phones. It can be bought for five British pounds ($7.40).
The European government may impose a massive fine on chipmaker Intel Corporation. The size of the penalty will be discussed amongst 27 government agencies in Europe. The European governments began their investigation when Advanced Micro Devices filed a complaint against Intel.
The European commission charged Intel with abusing its dominant position by giving large rebates to computer makers to stay with them, even beyond the actual cost of chips.
One of the most largest fines paid due to a ruling by the European commission is Microsoft. Microsoft was forced to pay $663 million for abusing dominance in a market as well. According to the New York Times, the fine imposed on Intel may even reach $1.3 billion.
AOL has hired Jeff Levick, a former executive at Google. Levick will become the president of global advertising and strategy, who will directly report to new AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. Armstrong himself was Google’s former North America ad sales head a couple of months ago.
“This is a perfect time to join AOL and I firmly believe that AOL’s best days are ahead of it,” stated Levick. “The company has one of the largest and most engaged audiences on the Web, some of the best advertising technology in the business, and a powerful third-party network. There is great opportunity here for us to capture.”
Greg Coleman was replaced by Levick. The reason why he was let go is unknown. Coleman joined AOL in February 2009. That he was at AOL for less than 3 months! Coleman was an advertising head at Yahoo! before AOL.
Booyah is an iPhone application development startup company that is based in Palo Alto, Calif. The company was founded by Keith Lee, Brian Morrisroe and Sam Christiansen, who have all had some sort of gaming experience. Lee was one of the head developers for the Diablo III franchise. Booyah recently announced that they have raised $4.5 million in Series A funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’s iFund initiative.
“We were immediately compelled by the promise of Booyah and the background of the founders,” stated Kleiner Perkins partner Matt Murphy in a press release. “The iFund was created to help build the most promising and innovative businesses that utilize the discrete capabilities of the iPhone and iPod touch. Booyah is a terrific example.”
Last month Kleiner Perkins invested in Ngmoco, another iPhone gaming company. Booyah has not announced when their product will be launching, but it is expected to revolve around MMO. Booyah currently has beta sign ups on their website.
Many engineers from Flickr have been laid off as part of a massive lay-off that took place at Yahoo! yesterday. Flickr Chief Architect Cal Henderson and Co-founder Stewart Butterfield are now rumored to be parterning on a new start-up.
Butterfield resigned from Yahoo! in June 2008 and Henderson left yesterday. The new start-up is expected to revolve around social gaming according to Kara Swisher. Yahoo! purchased Flickr for $35 million in March 2005. Caterina Fake, wife of Butterfield and another co-founder in Flickr joined a start-up called Hunch as the chief product officer.
Amit Chowdhry | April 30, 2009 | 408 views | Comments Categorized under Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is working on building more affordable Mac computers according to a source with AppleInsider. Lowering the cost of Macs have become extremely important for the company in order to stay competitive in a market that is pushing for cheaper netbooks and laptops. This is why Apple sold fewer Macs last quarter, but were still able to boost revenue by selling more iPod Touch and iPhone devices.
Microsoft has even stepped up their advertising to focus on ripping on Apple’s higher prices. Microsoft’s advertisements are making Macs sound like overpriced PCs.
Given the rumor, I would not anticipate Apple to get in to the netbook market themselves solely based on the fact that Apple COO Tim Cook stated himself that netbooks don’t deserve the Apple brand.
The rumor focuses on the prices of the 13″ MacBook and the iMac. New MacBook prices currently start at $999 and iMacs start at $1,199.
Disney has decided to jump on board with online video streaming by sending over content over to Hulu. That’s not all. Disney has acquired 27% of the company. Disney joins other Hulu owners NBC Universal, News Corporation, and Providence Equity Partners. Soon Disney will be sending over shows like Lost, Desperate Housewives, and Grey’s Anatomy to start with.
“We are smiling big today because we are honored to be working with a company that quite frankly inspired us from the very start of Hulu. Walt Disney was a founder, an innovator, a person with an atypically high quality bar, and someone who was maniacal in his obsession to delight his customers. Hulu has always taken great inspiration in that example and the culture Walt Disney created (which Bob Iger and his team carry forward and push to new levels),” stated the Hulu blog regarding the partnership.
CBS and the CW are basically the only major TV networks left out of Hulu. CBS is hosting high quality episodes of their own TV shows on CBS.com and TV.com. The CW hosts full TV shows on their website too.
Urbanspoon is a website that recommends local restaurants based on reviews and tastes. In a way its a competitor of Yelp. Urbanspoon was founded by three former employees at Jobster, Patrick O’Donnell, Ethan Lowry, and Adam Doppelt. They built the service without the need of venture capital investments, something that Jobster heavily depended on. InterActiveCorp (IAC) bought that self-funded company.
Although there isn’t an official figure, TechCrunch believes it is “something in the millions of dollars range” since the company is already fairly profitable. Urbanspoon used IAC’s CitySearch reviews for customers looking for restaurants. The acquisition talks have been taking place since the second half of last year.
Urbanspoon’s popularity had especially grown from their free iPhone application which finds out where you are located and recommends a random restaurant using a slot machine style. Urbanspoon will remain based in Seattle and will update their iPhone application soon. Now that Urbanspoon has access to IAC’s various other Internet properties, you never know what they will come up with next.
NVIDIA is starting to embrace Mac hardware now more than ever. The GeForce GTX 285 won’t be available for just PCs any more. The 285 takes DirectX 10 to gaming beyond HD with a top of 2560×1600 resolution. No price tag yet on the Mac version, but expect it to be pretty pricey.
Remember those old school vintage cameras that had folding bellows around the camera? The Voigtländer Bessa III camera has a similar concept for their lens itself to preserve the “vintageness” of the older cameras. The lens of the camera zooms in and out using the bellows concept. The camera can switch to two different aspect ratios: 6×6 and 6×7 on either a 120 or 220 film. The shutter speed of the Bessa III is about 4-1/500 sec. The camera even requires you to wind the film using a lever yourself. The price of the camera is £2000 in the UK, €2000 in Europe, and expected to be $2,000 in the U.S.
Facebook enthusiats that are all about networking and handing out creative business cards may want to take a note from designer Jean-Baptiste Gouraud. He designed a business card that has a snippet from his Facebook profile picture. The business card’s design looks similar to the screen where you are asked to confirm a friend on the social network.
This is just as clever as the “Google Me” business card. I knew a Facebook business card was going to be made at some point, now all we need is a LinkedIn business card.
