Wednesday, September 28, 2011

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Hitachi Develops Low-Cost, High-Quality 4.5-Inch LCDs For Phones Top
hitachi_displayBack in February this year, Hitachi Displays took the wraps off a super-advanced LCD for smartphones that boasted a 4.5-inch IPS LCD with 720 x 1,280 resolution. Fast forward to today, and the company is now announcing [JP] the development of a very similar panel with (almost) the same quality that costs "10-20%" less than touch displays currently used in smartphones. This new panel shares the main specs with the one shown in February: same size and resolution, 500cd/m2 brightness, LED backlight, and 329ppi pixel density. The only difference is that the older model had a better contrast ratio (1,100:1 vs. 1,000:1).
 
On Eve Of The Kindle Fire Launch, Amazon Posts A Strange "NYC Test" Video To YouTube Top
Screen Shot 2011-09-27 at 11.53.02 PMIt may just be a simple mistake, but it's an interesting mistake nonetheless. Earlier tonight, Amazon's Kindle YouTube page was updated with a new video. The name? "NYC Test". Considering Amazon is holding a press conference tomorrow morning in New York City to unveil their new Kindle tablet, obviously, this is worth noting. But what's odd is the content of the video itself. My first thought was that there is quite a bit of fire — perhaps pointing to the Kindle Fire name we first reported yesterday. But there is also no shot of any type of tablet device whatsoever, as Piotr Kowalcyk, who spotted the video, notices. And the video is full of Hollywood stars. And it's completely silent.
 
Larry Page And Eric Schmidt Hold Court At Google Zeitgeist [Video] Top
Screen Shot 2011-09-27 at 11.34.16 PMEven though Larry Page has been CEO of Google for just about 6 months now, he hasn't been as visible as many other high-profile CEOs. In fact, the most we've heard from him has been during earnings calls. But today during Google's annual Zeitgeist conference, Page took the stage to address the audience. Watch the entire 45-minute talk above. Page talked about a range of things — everything from Search to Android to YouTube to Chrome to Google+ to Nikola Tesla (the great inventor who "failed"). But things got more interesting when Eric Schmidt, Google's Executive Chairman who, of course, preceded Page as CEO, joined Page on stage for a Q&A. They talk the Motorola deal (while it will nearly double the size of Google's workforce, Page jokes that he wished it doubled their market cap too), patents (Page notes Google has never sued anyone over patents), innovation (the self-driving cars), and agility (changing the company every year).
 
Twitter Bot @MrDisclosure Wants Investors To Disclose Conflicts In Tweets Top
Screen Shot 2011-09-27 at 10.44.42 PMIt's hard out there for an tech investor! You're now competing with flashy Hollywood folk like Ashton Kutcher, who have unparalleled opportunities, like getting to show off their investment affiliations on their latest character's laptop, you know that tech startup founder character they play on what is only the most watched sitcom in America. It was the antics of Mr.Kutcher himself that inspired @MrDisclosure, a Twitter bot that attempts to get investors to disclose that they've invested in that company they've been tweeting about incessantly. After a Kutcher-edited issue of DETAILS magazine met with criticism when Kutcher failed to reveal his stake in some of the companies he featured, @MrDisclosure creator Andy Cheung set up the account, wanting to bring awareness to the issue of investor conflict.
 
Free Startup Tools: An Easy Way For Founders To Set The Terms Of Their Collaboration Top
collaboration-handsIn this, our third installment of "Free Startup Tools", we wanted to highlight an agreement launched by Seedcamp, the European startup accelerator, to help startup founders negotiate the early stages of building a company. (You can check out our first post on The Founder Institute's effort to standardize the founder-advisor relationship and compensation here and the second post on a tool that helps founders compare their term sheets to the standards here.) While we've touched on these better ways to negotiate term sheets and relationships with advisors, founding a company also often entails bringing on co-founders to help you build your business. Of course, in doing so, it's important for co-founders to be able to establish a level of trust that allows each founding member to fairly share in the benefits of success.
 
Groupon Closes The Redemption Loop With Loyalty Rewards Top
Groupon RewardGroupon may be struggling to get its IPO out the door, but that is not stopping it from introducing new products. Up until now, Groupon has built a billion-dollar business by getting local merchants to offer great one-time deals to consumers. Those daily deals are all about attracting new customers. Now the company is about to roll out a new product called Groupon Rewards that tries to give merchants a way to increase customer loyalty. Merchants will be able to start signing up tomorrow and consumers will start seeing the rewards in October. With a Groupon Reward, a business that offers a regular Groupon deal will be able to follow up with another reward that gets unlocked after the customer spends a certain amount of money. For instance, after a customer spends $50 or $100 at a store over time, she might get a Groupon Reward of $20 worth of goods for $4. It's all tied to the credit cards people use every day so there is no need to change behavior. There are no check-ins required or NFC-powered mobile wallets that need to be waved over strange new terminals. Groupon already has millions of credit cards on file. Now it is going to turn those credit cards into digital versions of the buy-10-get-one-free punch cards from the coffee shop that you stick in your wallet.
 
Citi Analysts: Facebook Ads Are Taking Spending Away From Display, Not Search Top
billboard-facebookBack in May, we reported that Facebook now accounts for one out of three ad impressions in the U.S., and that, really, no other web property in the U.S. comes close (Yahoo was second with 10 percent). That means that Facebook served approximately 340 billion ads in the first quarter. It's probably not a surprise, then, that advertising makes up for about 89 percent of the social network's total revenues, which are estimated at about $1.6 billion for the first six months of 2011. Today, on Citi's third quarter search marketing trends call, the panelists discussed the current landscape of search advertising, among other things that Google is maintaining its dominant market share in advertising spend on search, at 80 to 81 percent of total spend. While the panelists said that they're not seeing much demand for social search ad targeting, there is obviously a ton of interest in marketing on Facebook.
 
Cable Providers Mull Switch To A La Carte Subscriptions Top
chanI remember when we first got cable, back in the late 80s I suppose, and even as a youngster one of my first thoughts was "man, do we really need all these channels?" That suspicion, that we were perhaps being sold the whole buffet when we knew exactly what we wanted already, only became stronger with time, and before long it was a running joke shared by many in the world. 500 channels and you end up renting a movie because nothing good is on. Selling the whole package, dozens or hundreds of channels, has been part of the cable TV business model for a long time. It enabled smaller networks to grow and flourish under the ownership and careful tending of larger ones. But cable providers never talked about it as a reality of the TV business. They always just said people didn't want a la carte. A funny thing to tell the people asking for it. Now, with those same people getting their content a la carte by whatever means necessary (and feeling justified after decades of mistreatment by cable companies), it appears that Comcast, Time Warner, and the rest of the cable giants are changing their tune.
 
Loopt Teams With Virgin America To Bring Check-In Deals To SFO Top
6176341658_4e078ddc14_oLocation-based service Loopt is getting some nice promotion for the next three months, courtesy of San Francisco's International Airport and Virgin America. And it might make your trip to the airport a bit less expensive. Beginning this week, travelers going through SFO's new Terminal 2 will be able to check-in on Loopt to receive an offer from one of six businesses located within the terminal, including Kiehl's and Natalie's Candy Jar — as well as hefty discounts from Virgin America itself. The difference between this and most other check-in based offers is that the deal you receive is chosen randomly from one of these merchants (you just need to check-in at Terminal 2). The promotion is being coordinated by Virgin America and Loopt, but travelers flying on American (which is also based in Terminal 2 at SFO) will be able to score the check-in deals as well.
 
Hands-On With The Toshiba Thrive 7″ Tablet Top
Toshiba Thrive 7"Toshiba's entrance into the Android tablet market was a pretty good one — Android 3.1 Honeycomb, a wide array of connectivity ports, and interchangeable batteries. But all those ports coupled with a 10-inch form factor made for quite the hefty slate. Personally, I tend to favor the 7 to 8-inch tablet category, which is why I was so pleased to get a peek at Toshiba's latest tab: The Thrive 7".
 
Google Buys Seven Floor Building To Tap London Talent Top
Screen Shot 2011-09-28 at 00.24.51Since 2008 we've been covering the gradual emergence of a cluster of technology startups in East London. Hell, we've even made films about so-called Silicon Roundabout. But it wasn't until the Prime Minister suddenly appeared in the area to declare it a focus for government policy that larger tech companies started to take notice of what some random policy advisor decided to brand "Tech City". Since then there has been a litany of pledges pledged by corporates like Cisco, BT and Facebook to keep Number 10 Downing Street happy, but not a huge amount of, well, action. All that changes today with the news that Google is to rent, lock stock and barrel, for the next ten years, an entire seven-floor building in the area.
 
20 Years Of Microsoft Research Top
msr12This month marks the 20th anniversary of Microsoft Research, perhaps the most consistently interesting division of the hulking software company. Take a few minutes to peruse the timeline of their work, which ranges from consumer-facing work like Cleartype and spam recognition to the obscure, academic, and quixotic. The names behind the ideas are unlikely to be recognized, but they include geniuses, visionaries, knights, and humanitarians. Billions of dollars per year being expended towards furthering the reach and worth of technology constitutes an important but largely thankless endeavor. Sure, products like Office, Exchange, and other enterprise stuff make up the majority of Microsoft's income, but I don't think Microsoft was founded to be a office-tools company. The vision of Microsoft was putting a computer in every home and making that computer as versatile and powerful as possible. Microsoft Research is perhaps more in line with that philosophy than its parent company has been in years.
 
Facebook's Mobile Chief: Within 1-2 Years, We're Going To Be A Mobile Company Top
TsengFacebook has their sights locked on mobile. We know that. This afternoon at GigaOm's Mobilize conference, Facebook Mobile Chief Erick Tseng touched on just how crucial mobile is to them — and more importantly, how crucial it will be. Just how crucial are we talking about? Within 1-2 years, Tseng sees Facebook becoming as much of a mobile company as it is a desktop/web company.
 
ITC To Investigate Apple Based On HTC's Google-Fueled Patent Complaint Top
googThe battle between Apple and HTC (and Android in general) is getting fiercer. The United States International Trade Commission has just announced that it's instituting an investigation into Apple, based on a complaint that HTC brought against it earlier this month. Apple and HTC have been battling over patent infringement since Apple first filed suit in March 2010 — and up until recently HTC has been playing defense. Now it looks like it may be Apple's turn. To be clear, the ITC announcement says that the merits of the case have not yet been established. But if the ITC does eventually find that Apple has infringed on HTC's patents, it could impact many of Apple's products — the investigation spans "computers, tablet computers, and smartphones".
 
Don Draper Pitches The Facebook Timeline Top
Screen Shot 2011-09-27 at 2.48.22 PM"This makes me happy on a lot of levels," says Facebook Product manager Sam Lessin, about this Mad Men homage to Facebook's recently unveiled profile Timeline. Aside from founding (and selling) Drop.io to Facebook, Lessin was primarily responsible for the look and feel of Facebook Timeline, and has a right to be happy, after all, it could have ended up looking like this.
 
Canon To Bring Smooth Aperture Adjustment Rings To DSLRs? Top
canonringsIf you've been in photography for more than ten years, you probably remember the way things used to be on old film cameras. There was no electronic interconnect between the lens and the body, so lens-related functions (focus, zoom, aperture) were on the lens and body-related functions (ASA, shutter speed) were on the body. That changed as autofocus and auto-exposure, particularly on digital cameras, necessitated a data connection between the lens and the body. While we never did away with the focus and zoom rings, aperture went right out the window and was electronically controlled. A few nice cameras have aperture rings now — the X100, for instance — but generally speaking you can't find one except on professional cinema gear these days. But Canon may be looking to change that.
 
Toshiba Announces Updated Kid-Friendly Laptop Top
toshibaL735D2If ever there was an audience for a silver and neon green laptop, kids would be it (and also maybe people who like lime green a lot). That said, Toshiba has just launched its updated kid-friendly laptop: the Satellite L735D. Toshiba and Best Buy worked on this one together, and did quite a bit of research to make sure that the little ones were getting what they wanted. Which was a lot of silver and neon green.
 
T-Mobile Spots HTC Radar 4G On Horizon, Set For Holiday Launch Top
IMG-IBQXP347P6ZI6D3QLooks like the HD7 won't be the only Windows Phone on T-Mobile's shelves for much longer. Right on the heels of yesterday big smartphone announcement, T-Mobile has pulled back the curtains on the newest Windows Phone in their lineup: the HTC Radar 4G. The Radar was one of two Windows Phones revealed at IFA by HTC, and while AT&T made sure to snag the big boy, the Radar is no slouch. It sports a rather handsome white aluminum body, while a 3.8-inch LCD display running at 800x480 graces the Radar's front.
 
Kobo Pulse Aims To Offer New Twist On Social Reading Top
kpulse2Kobo has been cultivating their Reading Life initiative for a while now, and with the announcement of their new Pulse feature, they're digging even deeper into the social space than before. Slated to launch in their Kobo iOS apps first, Pulse is a new way for readers to connect with others while digitally thumbing through their collections.
 
Under Fire, OnStar Revises Plan To Continue Tracking Former Subscribers Top
onstar_logoLast week, OnStar made some changes to its terms of service which were almost universally recognized as being overreaching and unnecessary. The two primary changes were, first, that OnStar would continue to track subscribers who had terminated their service. They could ask to have their data connection severed in addition to unsubscribing, but why should they have to? Second, OnStar gave itself the ability to share or sell anonymized driving data to "any third party," "for any purpose, at any time." Faced with a flurry of criticism from users, sites like this one, and even Congress, OnStar has gone back on at least one of the changes.
 

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