Monthly Archives: December 2009
SWAT Team Takes Down Man Who Built A Gun Out Of LEGO
There was a working man in Toronto that really enjoyed playing with LEGOs. Except that hobby ended up causing him to be accosted by the Toronto SWAT team. The man supposedly ordered a replica of a gun made out of LEGO from BrickGun.com. He shut the door to his office and assembled the LEGO gun in his office and someone happened to catch it. Thinking the LEGO gun was a real gun, someone called the police.
The LEGO gun owner ended up getting handcuffed against a wall and about 6 officers along with the SWAT team secured the LEGO gun from him. No one was hurt and no one is getting charged. Even though the whole incident ended up being a dud for the SWAT team, I think that it was good for them to take precaution.
Categories BrickGun.com, LEGO
Leave a comment
The Crunchpad Gets Renamed To The JooJoo and Will Sell For $499 Starting December 11
TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington wrote a blog post about a year ago that announced his company was working on a touchscreen tablet intended only for Internet browsing. Throughout the past year, he hired a manufacturing firm, partnered with retailers, and made a partnership with Intel for processors. He wanted his device to sell for $199.
The device was supposed to hit the market by Black Friday, but it kept getting stalled. About a week ago Arrington gave an update about the project by saying that it wasn’t going to happen. The Crunchpad would not be released due to the fact that he owned the trademark and Fusion Garage, the manufacturing company contractor he was working with kicked him out.
Earlier today Fusion Garage CEO Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan said that Arrington was “unable to deliver.” Rathakrishnan also criticized Arrington for putting up pictures of the Crunchpad, publicizing news about the product, and talked about how important his role was in the product about what he was going to do while Fusion Garage was doing all the work.
Fusion Garage renamed the Crunchpad to JooJoo and plans to sell it for $499. The device will only work with a WiFi connection and supports HD video. JooJoo has a 12.1″ touchscreen and boots up in 9 seconds. Arrington said that he would not comment on what is going on with the CrunchPad going forward, but assured that there will be litigation involved going forward.
GOOGLE REAL TIME SEARCH GOES LIVE [VIDEO]
Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has launched real-time search. Google has integrated search results into their search engine using results from Yahoo! Answers, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, news articles, and websites. The results are added as they get indexed by Google.
The content from Facebook is pulled from public Pages, not profiles. Only public data is grabbed from MySpace as well.
Categories Google
Leave a comment
Facebook Is Estimated To Make $710 Million In 2010 Revenues
Facebook was estimated to make over $500 million in the year of 2009. For the year of 2010, The Wall Street Journal is estimating that the social network will make $710 million in revenues based on user growth and consumer spending. The Wall Street Journal estimated the revenues using data from NYPPEX.
If Facebook ends up making $710 million in 2010, then it would be a 40% growth in 2009 revenues. As for LinkedIn, data from NYPPEX indicates that LinkedIn will bring in $200 million in 2010 revenues. In about four years, NYPPEX estimates that Facebook will make $1.9 billion, LinkedIn at $300 million, and Twitter at $283 million.
Categories Facebook, NYPPEX
Leave a comment
Molinker Gets Banned From iTunes App Store For Fake Reviews
Molinker Inc. was one of those Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone application developers that produced a bunch of limited functionality apps and stuck them in the store. They made over 1,000 apps and got caught scamming the application review system. All thousand of their applications were taken down from the Apple App Store too.
The phony reviews were caught by a friend of the person that runs the Iphoneography blog. He or she noticed that about 90% of the reviews on Molinker applications were made by the same group of people. Most of those people had very bad grammar indicating that the fake reviews were outsourced to people in overseas firms. MobileCrunch points out that the application NightCam Pro had about 42 out of 44 5-star reviews were fake.
iPhoneography and the friend of the blog that caught the phony reviews sent a 5 paragraph e-mail to Apple VP Phil Schiller.
Molinker was the second largest (in terms of app quantity) App development company to get banned from the App Store. The first was Khalid Shaikh’s Perfect Acumen development company.
Categories Apple App Store, Apple Inc., Iphoneography, Molinker Inc., Phil Schiller
6 Comments
87 People That Google CEO Eric Schmidt Follows On Twitter
Google was rumored to be making an offer to buy out Twitter back in the day but that deal fell through. The only thing left for Google to do was sit back and watch Twitter grow, only to make a search deal with them a couple of years later. Now Google CEO Eric Schmidt has joined Twitter with the user name ericschmidt and the company verified that it is actually him. So who would the Google CEO think is worthwhile to follow? Here’s the list of the first 86 people he decided to follow.
1. JerryBrown2010 – Jerry Brown – Current Attorney General for California
2. wiredscience
- WIRED Magazine Science section
3. karaswisher
- Kara Swisher, Editor for AllThingsD.com
4. wyclef
- Wyclef Jean (Hip hop artist)
5. om
- Blogger Om Malik (gigaom.com)
6. maddow
- MSNBC Correspondent/Host of The Rachel Maddow show
7. GStephanopoulos
- ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent George Stephanopoulos
8. pennjillette
- Penn Jillette (magician and co-founder of Penn & Teller)
9. MCHammer
- MC Hammer (former rap artist and tech entrepreneur)
10. goldman
- Jason Goldman – Director of Product Strategy at Obvious
11. googlecalendar
- Official Google Calendar Twitter account
12. googleresearch
- Official Google Research Twitter account
13. googlenews
- Official Google News Twitter account
14. googlereader
- Official Google Reader Twitter account
15. marissamayer
- Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google
16. BarackObama
- Twitter account of President Barack Obama (updated by White House staff)
17. tonyrobbins
- Motivational speaker Tony Robbins
18. elatable
- Head of Google communications and social applications Bradley Horowitz
19. slettvet
Sierra Slettvet (Google Ads employee)
20. katiejstanton
- Google Finance Product Manager Katie Stanton
Categories Eric Schmidt, Google
2 Comments
Conan O’Brien Makes Fun Of Avatar Video Game [Video]
I thoroughly enjoy it when talk show hosts make fun of video games. Especially video games that are based on films and mash-up trailers to go along with it. In the above clip, Conan O’Brien talks about how the Avatar game publishers released the game too early. What we end up seeing is some Rock-em-Sock-em Robots falling all over each other.
Categories Conan O'Brien
1 Comment
Samsung Launches The Diva Collection With The S7070 and S5150 Mobile Phones
Samsung Electronics has debuted a new Diva fashion series of mobile phones This includes the Samsung Diva S7070 and the Samsung Diva S5150. Samsung will introduce the Diva Collection models every year to appeal to younger women mobile phone users.
“Today’s modern women play many roles, from fashionista to heroine. The Samsung Diva Collection delivers mobile phones accentuating all aspects of the stylish, attention-getting woman to let the diva in everyone come to life,” stated Samsung Electronics VP of Mobile Marketing Younghee Lee. “The Samsung Diva Collection 2010 is a part of Samsung’s long-term goal to meet the unquenched needs of one of our most important target group, women mobile users.”
The Samsung Diva S7070 has a 3.2 megapixel camera featuring ‘Beauty Effect’ and ‘Lomo Effect’ image editing features. The Diva 7070 has a diamond-shaped crystal button in the front of the phone. The S7070 has pop-up SMS notifications whenever a MySpace or Facebook profile gets updated. Additional features include ‘Fake Call’ and ‘SOS messages’ in case women wants to get away from some creepsters.
Motorola Makes An Investment In Sensitive Object
Motorola has made an investment in a company that focuses on multi-touch technologies. The company that received the investment is Sensitive Object. Sensitive Object designed a platform called Anywhere MultiTouch that adds a virtual touchpad to the surfaces of a device. Sensitive Object can transform any product into a touch device using their ReverSys system.
Sensitive Object uses acoustics in the ReverSys system to “analyze sound waves departing from the point of a touch to precisely and cost-effectively transform any product into a touch device.”
“Natural user interface (NUI) and in particular interacting with a device through touch is an area of rapid development and great excitement,” stated Motorola Ventures Managing Director Reese Schroeder. “Sensitive Object provides an innovative and unique approach allowing new ways of interaction. We’re most excited to be involved in their growth and success.” The financial details were undisclosed regarding the investment.
Categories Motorola, Motorola Ventures, Reese Schroeder, Sensitive Object
Leave a comment
The K9 Storm Intruder Canine Armor Helps Protect The Military Overseas
The K9 Storm Intruder canine armor is a bulletproof dog vest with a wireless camera, speakers, and microphone built in. The soldier that manages the Intruder canine armor can give the dog commands and see what the dog sees. These dogs help protect the military in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Intruder weighs less than 7 oz. The Intruder runs for about $20,000 and is their lightest camera and audio system.
Categories K9 Storm Incorporated
Leave a comment