Friday, July 27, 2012

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TechCrunch Giveaway: Nexus 7 Plus Free Ticket To Disrupt SF #TCDisrupt Top
nexus_7_banner_001-650x317It's that time again. We are super excited to give away not only a free ticket to Disrupt SF, but we are also giving away a free Nexus 7 tablet to one lucky winner. I know, read on. Disrupt SF is shaping up to be one of the biggest technology events of the year. It's still more than a month away and we have already announced some undeniably incredible speakers that so far include: TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, The Honest Company's Jessica Alba and Brian Lee, Ron Conway, Vinod Khosla, Kevin Rose, San Francisco Mayer Ed Lee, and many, many more. We still have a ton more announcements to make until September, so be on the lookout for those.
 
The Tombox Is A Beautiful Retro Speaker Stuffed With Modern Conveniences Top
tombox-145It can be argued that today's modern electronics lack the soul found in older devices. There was a time that a radio felt nearly alive thanks to its glowing inner tubes and wooden casing. But now, with printed circuit boards and mass produced plastic casings, electronics feel dead, disposable and down right stiff. Tombox speakers are a bit different. Using repurposed vintage electronics, these speakers combine the warm feeling of older electronics with features of a modern kit -- think steampunk without the gaudy nonsense.
 
UK Information Commissioner Slams Google For Failure To Provide Street View Data Top
valmont_138_slamGoogle has been in ongoing discussions (some might say a war of words) with The UK's Information Commissioner. If you remember, Google's street cars captured all sorts of information other than just pictures, like WiFi nodes and even IP traffic, when they drove around. Google is fighting multiple cases across Europe with various public bodies about this. Today Google confirmed that it had located additional payload data collected by its Street View cars prior to May 2010 and the ICO, which has repeatedly asked Google to delete the extra data, has thrown a few choice words in Google's direction.
 
Tubbs And Crockett May Need To Borrow Your Handsome Bluetooth Brick Headset Top
0de468e3311094e5671bedf3581bbcd2_largeIf you're heading down to Radio Shack to buy a brand new Tandy 1000 (the hottest PC out there!) then you may want to bring this handsome brick handset designed to work with your "smaller" phone via Bluetooth. You can whip this baby out in line while you write a check out for your PC, modem, and MS-DOS 3.0 purchases.
 
eToys Vets Launch Wonderville, A Platform For Early Childhood Education Top
Wonderville-logoWonderville, an education-focused technology startup built by eToys vets from the dotcom era, is today making its public debut. You might, at first glance, think of the company as something like a "Khan Academy" for the younger crowd, given that its goal is to augment a child's education (K-8) with additional materials and teachings. But the similarities end there. Where Khan Academy focuses on delivering video tutorials to students, Wonderville sources third-party content from a number of places all over the web. This includes not only YouTube, but also Amazon and iTunes, among other things.
 
Ahead Of Olympics, Samsung Supports Team Great Britain With Union Jack Galaxy S III Top
Screen shot 2012-07-27 at 9.52.47 AMJust in time for the 2012 London Olympics, Samsung, one of the games' official partners, has released a Union Jack-bearing Olympics-edition Galaxy S III, a little something special for Londoners enjoying one of the oldest and most revered sporting traditions on the planet. Unfortunately for everyone who isn't on the Queen's team, the phone doesn't actually support the Olympic games as much as it does the hosting country, Great Britain. It comes with a limited edition Union Jack back casing on the same blue background we've come to admire on the GSIII. The idea is that Brits can wave their phone during the game to show support. The phone will officially be made available at Carphone Warehouse on August 1, with prices starting at £28 per month.
 
OnLive To Ship On The OUYA Android Gaming Device Top
ouya-onlive_630xThe OUYA could change the gaming scene. The low price Android gaming set-top box has the makings of something great. But as the old saying goes, content is king and without killer titles, the OUYA will have a hard time attracting consumers and developers alike. Enter OnLive. The two companies took to the interwebs this morning to announce OnLive will ship with OUYA. This means the little Android device will have access to first-run traditional gaming titles at launch. OnLive's library currently includes Assassins Creed Revelations, L.A. Noire, The Darkness II and a ton more. Having access to this deep library will likely give the OUYA's creators a bit more time to court Android devs to make exclusive titles for their new gaming device.
 
Chinese Case Maker Reveals Potential iPhone 5 Design Top
iphone 5The iPhone 5 is coming. The latest rumors peg September 21 as its release date. But even though Apple has yet to announce the phone, there are already countless, as in, hundreds and hundreds, of cases available for the model. It was just a matter of time until one of those case makers filled in the blanks by inserting a logical prototype into one of their cases. Now, the device shown here is likely not a real-life, completely working iPhone 5. Even if it is a real thing, it doesn't matter since Apple already revealed most of iOS 6's goodies. Case makers are given specific specifications, and from there, they design cases to properly fit the device. The hundreds of cases available tell a story of a taller iPhone like the one in the pictures here.
 
Apple Buys Samsung's Android Security Partner AuthenTec For $356M Top
Apple buys AuthenTecAmid fierce smartphone competition between Samsung and Apple that has spilled into a multinational patent battle, it looks like Apple may have opened yet another front on the M&A side: it is buying mobile security company AuthenTec -- which had only just signed a deal with Samsung for Android devices -- for $356 million. AuthenTec, among other things, makes fingerprint sensor chips that are used for security and identification purposes; these are embedded in computing devices. The news was first reported by Reuters; the full announcement was filed with the SEC.
 
Financial Times: Our Digital Subscribers Now Outnumber Print, And Digital Is Half Of The FT's Revenue Top
FT web app ipadA milestone reached as the world of old media continues its push in a digital direction: the storied, pink-sheeted daily newspaper the Financial Times, read by 2.1 million readers daily, today said digital subscribers now outnumber those in print, and that digital revenues now account for half of all sales in the FT Group. And what's more, sales actually grew rather than declined. The FT says that digital subscriptions grew by 31%, and now number over 300,000, while print subscriptions are now at 299,000. The digital portion is outpacing overall growth by quite some way: the FT's total paid subscriber base (both print and online) is now at 599,000, and grew by only 2% on last year. Overall sales at the company for the first six months of 2012 were £216 million ($339 million), compared to $203 for the period a year ago, growth of 6%.
 
MotoGP Comes To The US And There's An App For It (Of Course) Top
12__GIX2525.mediagallery_output_image_[1920x1080]Race fans, start your engines! Today marks the start of the Red Bull US Grand Prix - the first stop in the US of the MotoGP series - at the world renowned Laguna Seca raceway. For those unfamiliar, MotoGP is the pinnacle of motorcycle racing and the equivalent of F1 but on two wheels. By now you're probably wondering why a racing series - much less a motorcycle racing series - is on TechCrunch, right? For starters, the prototype motorbikes racing in MotoGP are purpose-built and the technology used in these bikes eventually make there way down to production bikes that you and I can purchase. More importantly, the technology (fuel efficiency, anti-wheelie, etc.) that's being refined by the likes of Honda, Yamaha and Ducati make the bikes we purchase safer and more reliable. Not quite the technology we normally cover on TechCrunch but important nonetheless.
 
Slow And Low: Smartphone Sales Grew By Only 32% This Quarter; Overall Mobile Market Just 1%, Says StrategyAnalytics Top
turtleNow that all the big handset makers have put in their quarterly sales figures, Strategy Analytics has done the number crunching for an overall picture of what happened in the mobile market. The upshot: just as many predicted, mobile as a whole -- facing wider economic slowdown and "shifting consumer tastes" -- remained largely flat, growing by just 1%. But smartphones, still at a less mature state, are selling much better: collectively, shipments (which equals sales in SA's book) grew by 32% in the quarter, the analysts said, with Samsung and Apple leading the way with over half the global market between them. That sounds like a good-news story for smartphones, except when you understand that 32% growth (146.1 million units total in Q2) is actually the slowest the smartphone market has expanded in three years. In comparison, the market grew by 77% in the same quarter a year ago.
 
Cisco Touts Its Cloudy Open Future – Will VMware Do The Same? Top
openstackLew Tucker is the distinguished Cloud CTO for Cisco Systems. He's a revered character in the "clouderati," community for his clear views and his support for OpenStack, the open cloud effort that is getting a lot of attention these past few weeks. He's also a proponent of open source. In this video, he says open source is an increasing part of Cisco's future. It's a way to give back to the community and make the world a better place. He describes how Cisco is responding to the market need for an alternative to Amazon Web Services. He says Cisco sees that as an opportunity to develop a network based service that is an integral part of OpenStack.
 
Finding Inspiration In The Aurora Tragedy, By Helping Victims Through HopeMob Top
5009f659-de40-4c36-abab-54846ca641e8I've gone through various stages of "connectedness" in my life. We all have. Some of you are so young that you've never known anything else and some of you remember the days when you only knew the local news and big events like going to the moon. Today, we no longer have to rely on travelers spreading information like a game of telephone through roadside diners along Route 66. Nowadays the whole world is a social media stage, where everyone can step up to the mic and say hello and someone might listen.
 
Motorola's Xoom Wi-Fi Tablets Now Receiving Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean Update Top
motorola xoomMove over, Nexus 7 -- you're not the only Jelly Bean-powered Android tab in town anymore. According to a handful of Droid-Life tipsters, it appears that Motorola's aging XOOM tablet is finally getting its crack at Google's latest and greatest dessert-themed OS update. The process has been in the works for about two or three days now, with selected members of Motorola's Feedback Network receiving the Android 4.1.1 build for soak testing earlier this week. At this point, the floodgates seem to have opened, though not every XOOM owner will be able to enter the fray just yet.
 
Behold, Early iPhone and iPad Prototypes Top
iproto13The iPhone's design is iconic but the final version looked rather different from early designs. With sleek but simple lines, the iPhone set the bar for smartphone design. This bar was set so high that most agree that the iPhone undeniably influenced other phones -- a thought that Samsung is currently fighting against. However, as revealed by court documents, the iPhone we all know finally hit the market after several generations of wild concepts.
 
VINCI Launches First Kid-Focused App Library, Woos Developers With 75% Rev Share Top
Screen shot 2012-07-26 at 7.17.14 PMLike many parents, Dan Yang was fascinated by her young daughter's obsession with her iPhone. As she went through the process of planning the best way to introduce her to technology, apps, and games, she quickly became frustrated with the lack of educational technology made specifically for children. Unlike many parents, however, Yang is an entrepreneur and optical engineer, so she did what any entrepreneurial, geeky mom would do: She decided to hack her own solution. Yang developed VINCI Early Learning Systems and VINCI tablets -- which she believes to be the first FDA-safety-compliant tablet that is designed purely for youngins. Of course, a tablet and learning tool without a supporting network or resources to supply it with content is a lonely device. So, today, the startup is announcing the release of the VINCI Kids Library, a library for kid-focused digital content and apps, including interactive stories, learning games, and over 500 titles at launch -- with what Yang expects to be 1,000 titles before the end of the year.
 
Samsung's Q2 2012 Earnings: Smartphone Business Propels $41.5B In Revenues, $5.9B In Profits Top
samsung_logo_crown-300x268Samsung has just reported its Q2 2012 earnings, and it would seem that the Korean electronics giant is still the king of mobile, with an operating profit of $5.9 billion for the period, up 79 percent year over year. Of course, the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note have plenty to do with that, considering Samsung predicted it would sell 10 million Galaxy S III units by July. And that's just what it did.
 
Google Revamps Its Search Results Page, Moves Search Tools And Categories Below The Search Field Top
google1Google is going vertical. In the latest revision of its search page, Google moved the search tools from the sidebar to several drop down menus under the search field. This is just the latest of several notable changes to Google's core function that also included adding a fully functional scientific calculator to the search page and enabling a handwriting mode in mobile search. This new version is slowly rolling out to users. TechCrunch was first tipped about the layout this morning and I just spied it on my computer a few minutes ago. I'm honestly torn over the new design.
 
Thomson Reuters Acquires Brand Protection Company MarkMonitor Top
markmonitor logoThomson Reuters announced today that it has made a deal to acquire a brand protection company called MarkMonitor for an undisclosed sum. The MarkMonitor website says the company offers a suite of products and services that include brand protection (i.e., protecting trademarks and commerce), anti-piracy, anti-fraud, and domain management. The Wikimedia Foundation recently moved all of its sites from GoDaddy to MarkMonitor (as noted by The Next Web). The company says it serves more than half of brands on the Fortune 100.
 

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