Wednesday, December 12, 2012

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After Going Dark For The Second Time In Two Weeks, Tumblr Is Gradually Coming Back Online Top
tWe reported earlier this evening that popular blogging engine, Tumblr, was suffering from another outage, as users across the country were reporting slow loading, intermittent errors on pages and total Tumblr darkness. The company almost immediately confirmed the issue, reporting via Twitter that it had "taken the site down in order to resolve a network issue." While Tumblr didn't offer any reasons as to why it was forced to take the site down, it finally offered an update, saying that dashboards were on their way back up and that other features would be rolling out incrementally. As of now, while still a little slow, Tumblr is officially back up and operational (at least for TechCrunchers).
 
biNu Partners With US State Dept. To Distribute English-Language Learning Materials Top
binuThe US Department of State and mobile startup biNu just announced that they're working together in a public-private partnership. It's not, perhaps, the most obvious partnership, but biNu says that its app platform for feature phones and lower-end smartphones is already used by an audience of 4 million people, largely in emerging economies. That's an audience that the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs wants to reach, so it will be using biNu to distribute its English-language learning materials, such as e-books, audio, and games.
 
Kickstarter Testing New Video-Centric 'Leanback Mode' Top
kickstarter leanbackI was poking around Kickstarter yesterday when I was hit with a big black screen telling me that I was about to experience a "brand new, super secret, full-screen internet party" — in other words, I was about to test out the site's "Leanback mode." Basically, in Leanback mode, Kickstarter starts playing project videos automatically. (I would have included a screenshot, but it's literally just a video filling up your browser.) As each video ends, a new one begins, prefaced by a brief screen describing the project. If you're bored with a video, you hit the left and right arrows to skip. If you find one you like, you visit the project page by hitting the down button.
 
Who Is This? (Sprint + Google Voice Is Hopeless) Top
You can’t say I didn’t give it an honest try. It was over a year ago now that I tried switching from an Android phone to the iPhone. The main reason I had waited so long was my tether to Google Voice – I’m all in there after porting my phone number to them a few years ago. And Google Voice never worked natively on the iPhone. Until Sprint, that is. Their partnership with Google let me use my Google Voice number as my Sprint iPhone number, bypassing Apple completely and letting me use Google Voice natively for SMS, phone log dialing, etc. So I switched to Sprint and enabled Google Voice and I thought all my problems were fixed (putting aside Sprint’s awful signal and data issues). I even got one of those Sprint Airwave boxes to get a signal at home. I was committed to making this work. It doesn’t work. It never really has. I give up now. Phone Calls: If I initiate a call from Google Voice in the browser to my iPhone everything works great. If I initiate the call directly from the iPhone, then about half the time my caller id shows my Google Voice number, and half the time it shows the original Sprint number. It tends to do this in bunches, so as soon as I think it’s settled on one number or the other it switches on me again. People have no idea who’s calling them, and eventually they end up storing both my phone numbers and it’s a mess. SMS: Same thing. If I text from the browser it’s all good. But when I use my phone it mostly uses the original Sprint phone number. Text messages sent to my Google Voice number sometimes, but don’t always, show up on my phone. Text messages from my phone only show up in Google Voice in the browser if the phone happened to use the Google Voice number that time. A common (daily) sms exchange with me looks something like this: You: Hey Mike Me: Hey You: Who is this? That’s because they send a SMS to my GV number. It was forwarded to my phone (which sometimes happens, sometimes not). I respond but Sprint uses the old Sprint number, so it sets up a whole new thread on the other person’s phone. They have no idea who I am. Then we
 
An Apple-Foursquare Hookup Could Mean The End Of Yelp Reviews In iOS Top
maps-4sqApple SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue sent an interesting 31st tweet today. It's a Foursquare check-in at Apple's HQ, indicating that Cue is trying out the service at work. Moreover, Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley is spending a week in San Francisco. These two circumstantial bits of information incite speculation: could they be talking about an acquisition, or a deep software integration in iOS?
 
Disney Mobile Plans Big Holiday Push With Three New Games: Monster's Inc. Run, Nemo's Reef, And Where's My Holiday? Top
where's my holidayDisney Mobile, the maker of Where's My Water? (plus a bunch of games tied to Disney films), has some big plans for the next couple of weeks, with four updates to existing games and the launch three new games scheduled for the next week or so. Bart Decrem, who runs Disney's mobile division, told me that he's hoping the mix of updates and new titles will move his team back into Apple's charts for the top 20 free and paid apps. Thanks the purchase of new mobile hardware and gift cards, the holidays have always been a period of rapid growth for Disney (and for other app developers). For example, last year the company saw a 421 percent increase in downloads during the peak holiday period from December 20 to January 3, compared to the two weeks prior. But Decrem said this is the first time his team has coordinated such a big holiday push between all of its titles — in previous years, he said, "We just didn't have the network."
 
After Last Week's Worm, Tumblr Goes Dark Again; Company Says Outage Is Intentional To Resolve "Network Issue" Top
6013940675_4d647d5011_zAs you may have heard by now, this afternoon, many users have reported being unable to access their favorite mixed media blogging platform, Tumblr. The company confirmed this afternoon that this is not in fact one of the first signs of the Mayan prophesy, tweeting that the site is "currently experiencing slow loading or intermittent errors on certain pages." While comforting to receive this confirmation, Tumblr didn't offer any explanation as to the cause behind the slow loading and outages. We've since learned from a Tumblr spokesperson that the company has "taken the site down in order to resolve a network issue," and that it will be updating as soon as it knows more.
 
More Than Privacy Controls, Facebook Needs Our Trust To Keep Growing Top
Facebook TrustIf you don't trust Facebook, you might keep an account, but you won't share as much. So Facebook is aiming to educate users about privacy in the hopes that they'll keep doubling the amount they share each year and uphold Zuckerberg's Law. Facebook privacy can't just be "good enough." It needs us confident in our control because as it runs low on people to sign up, attracting more data is the main way it will grow
 
President Bill Clinton at Dell World: We Need To Get Into The Tomorrow Business Top
clintonAt Dell World in Austin, Texas, today, President Bill Clinton delivered a keynote address discussing the importance of collaboration and how society needs to get into the tomorrow business. Silicon Valley, the startup community, big data vendors -- all of them are in the business of tomorrow. All of these communities live in the future. But only slivers of society are showing signs that we are preparing for it. Clinton cited recent studies that show fourth graders are now just behind South Korea and Singapore in math and science test scores. That's a good sign but compare 11th grade test scores and there's a gaping difference.
 
Mac Users Rejoice: An Actual Shipping Thunderbolt Docking Station Goes On Sale Tomorrow Top
matrox-ds1After a lengthy delay, there will finally be a Thunderbolt expansion dock ready for actual purchase tomorrow, according to MacRumors. The Matrox DS1, first unveiled back in June and then updated in September, will be a real shipping device beginning tomorrow, with a $249 price tag.
 
Kickstarter: Take High-Definition, 360-Degree Video With The Sphericam Camera Ball Top
A few years ago in Prague I met a guy named Jeffrey Martin who is one of the world's best panoramic photographers. At that time he had a bunch of weird hardware that took mostly panoramic photos but he's since branched out to video, building his own methods for capturing 360-degree scenes. The Sphericam is his invention and it looks pretty amazing.
 
Canopy Labs Raises $1.5M To Make Customer Analytics More Accessible Top
canopy labs logoCanopy Labs, a Y Combinator-incubated startup promising to help mid-sized businesses identify their most valuable customers, has raised $1.5 million in its first round of venture funding. Co-founder and CEO Wojciech Gryc told me that following the completion of YC in August, the team decided to return to Toronto, and it raised money from "Canada-friendly" investors. The round was led by BDC Venture Capital IT Fund, with participation from Valar Ventures (which is backed by Peter Thiel) and various angels.
 
Gift Guide: Ten One Design Pogo Connect iPad Stylus Top
giftguide-1280px-pogo-connectThe number of options out there for iPad styli at this point is almost crazy. But Ten One Design has always made solid ones, and the Pogo Connect also adds pressure sensitivity via Bluetooth 4.0. It's a slightly different take than others in this space, and one that benefits immensely from extremely low power consumption.
 
Mozilla Launches Its Latest GameOn Competition, Wants You To "Reimagine The Web As The Console" Top
mozilla_gameonMozilla just announced the launch of its GameOn competition for web-based games built on top of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other open web technologies like WebGL and WebRTC. Developers can submit their games until February 24, 2013. There are three categories (hackable games, multi-device games and web-only games) and the winners will get an all-expense paid trip to San Francisco for GDC 2013.
 
Fear Not, Those Without Access To Other Avenues To Internet Porn, Google Is Not Really Censoring Results Top
scaled.Screen Shot 2012-12-12 at 3.52.17 PMBe brave, heroes, for the hour is at hand: Google, in their wisdom, is now filtering - or selectively showing - hardcore porn with a bit heavier hand. This means looking up "boobs" on Google brings far fewer bare breasts than before but looking up "orgy facial sex" will definitely bring up some of the sweet stuff.
 
CEO Brian Chesky Says Airbnb Will Be Filling More Room Nights Than All Hilton Hotels By The End Of 2012 Top
AirbnbQuoting Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, Mike Olson told the crowd that, by the end of this year (December 31st), the company will be filling more room nights than Hilton Hotels. For those unfamiliar, Hilton operates an international chain of luxury hotels and resorts, which according to its corporate overview, currently operates more than 3,200 hotels and 525,000 rooms in 77 countries, including more than 135,000 team members across the globe. (Although Hilton's Wikipedia page indicates the number of hotels worldwide is closer to 540, for what it's worth.)
 
I Love The Smell Of Sepia Tone In The Morning Top
pfIn three short weeks it will be 2013. Someone may want to send a fax to Flickr and Twitter to let them know. Over the past couple of days, both of these services have pulled a move straight out of 2010: they launched new versions of their mobile apps with — get this — filters. Filters! These guys have millions of dollars and thousands of employees at their disposal and this is the kind of innovation they're dicking around with.
 
Soundtracking's New Twitter Cards Music Integration Lets You Hear Photos Within Tweets Top
Soundtracking Music TweetWhile Instagram has pulled its photos out of the Twitter stream, tweets from Soundtracking now stream music in-line. The music moment-sharing app joins a small club including YouTube, Rdio, Official.fm, and Soundtracking that are pushing the limits of multi-media tweets. They hope a full-featured experience on Twitter will pull in traffic to their apps better than hoarding rich media.
 
Google Revamps Its Currents Mobile Newsreader App To Make It Smarter And More Scannable Top
unnamedGoogle just launched an update to Google Currents, the company's Flipboard competitor, that makes it easier to scan through categories and editions from Google publisher partners like The Guardian and Forbes in the app. In addition, Google says it also brought some of its search technology to the app to power its breaking news sections.
 
Fly Or Die: Kindle Fire HD 8.9 Vs. Nook HD+ Top
Screen Shot 2012-12-12 at 2.14.56 PMShort of an iPad, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 and Nook HD+ are about as good as it gets in the 10-inch media tablet space, so we thought it only fitting to Fly or Die these bad boys side-by-side. Though John and I did disagree a bit on which is best, we can both agree that either of these media tablets is an excellent buy for the avid reader and movie lover. Both have excellent displays — the Nook HD+ technically has a slightly higher ppi and laminated screen, while the Fire HD offers stereo speakers. In almost every way, though, it comes down to software.
 

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