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Millennial Media: Apple OS Grows By 36 Percent In June, Android Up By 23 Percent

Posted: 15 Jul 2010 05:03 AM PDT

Mobile ad network Millennial Media, which claims that its network reaches 82 percent of 72 million mobile web users in the U.S., is reporting that globally, Apple OS requests are up by 36 percent in June, after dropping 33 percent in May.

Android requests continued to rise, and grew another 23 percent month over month. Android is now up a whopping 439% since January. iPad requests are also increasing at a fast rate, growing 206 percent in June, after rising 160 percent in May. RIM ad requests increased percent month-over-month, posting a 41 percent increase in requests since January.


Daily Crunch: Breakfast in Bed Edition

Posted: 15 Jul 2010 12:00 AM PDT

The path of Kid Icarus: Uprising

Posted: 14 Jul 2010 11:00 PM PDT

One of the first games scheduled to come out for the Nintendo 3DS, is Kid Icarus:Uprising. It’s an interesting story about how the game was developed, given that the president of Nintendo personally asked game designer Masahiro Sakurai to come up with a title to be launched with the 3DS.

Sakurai decided to develop a 3D shooter, despite the fact that the genre isn’t very strong in Japan. In a recent interview, Sakurai said that he’d rather come up with something new, instead of retreading a title that everyone had seen before, or a concept that had been done to death. Sakurai goes on to talk about the development and design process, and the interview gives a very in-depth view into how games in general are developed. Very much worth your time to read if you have any interest at all in Nintendo or game design in general.

Noise cancelling headphones without electronics? I’ll believe it when I hear it

Posted: 14 Jul 2010 10:30 PM PDT

ZEM headphones are a new product created by an audio researcher, who claims to have come up with a noise cancellation technique that doesn’t require specialized electronics in order to work. This makes the headphones lighter and cheaper, but sometimes products like this oversell and under deliver.

The headphones are light, weighing in at a mere 2oz, fold up, and look somewhat less then fashionable. The headphones will run you about $90, so it might be worth it to pick up a pair and try them out. I’m somewhat skeptical myself, but technology does move forward, so it could be possible that they work. You can order them online, directly from SensGard.

[via Gizmodo]

Pay or pain: the private park bench

Posted: 14 Jul 2010 10:00 PM PDT

PAY & SIT: the private bench (HD) from Fabian Brunsing on Vimeo.

This is something you’d expect to see in the comedy “Park & Rec”, not from a designer in Europe. At any rate, the “Pay & Sit” bench is a concept product at this point, but the concept is you drop a coin into the slot, the spikes retract for a preset period of time. After the time runs out, a warning alarm sounds, and the the spikes extend again. Just the thing for Central Park.

[via Neatorama]

8-Bit Vintner retiring geek wines

Posted: 14 Jul 2010 09:30 PM PDT

Geeks generally aren’t associated with drinking wine; soda, beer, sometimes even mead, but rarely do you connect wine drinking with being a geek. Mike James worked really hard to change that perception, and made great strides in bringing a more civilized drink to the unwashed masses. He was at least partly successful, and became known for producing limited runs with names like Player 1, and Boss Monster.

Unfortunately, geeks just don’t buy wine it seems. James wasn’t able to build the business to the level he needed, and archaic liquor laws made it difficult to get wine to the geeks that did want to sample his warez. James also was known for a rather unusual Child’s Play auction – a hand-etched bottle of “Boss Monster” that sold for $3,000 to PopCap Games. You can read the full interview with James in the Scottsdale AZ newspaper, which is where he lives now despite the wine being produced in Washington state.

If you have a taste for the vino, and want to help Mike on his way to semi-retirement, the 8-bit Player 1 Red is selling on wine.woot.com right now, for $49.99 for a 4 pack. Since Mike is calling it quits for the foreseeable future, this may be your last chance to buy a bottle of gaming history. I hear that the wine tastes pretty good too.

Motorola Droid X actually self-destructs if you try to mod it

Posted: 14 Jul 2010 08:54 PM PDT

Well, I might have recommended a Droid X for big-phone-lovin’ fandroids out there… but now that I’ve read about Motorola’s insane eFuse security system, I’m going to have to give this one a big fat DON’T BUY on principle. I won’t restate all my reasons for supporting the modding, hacking, jailbreaking, and so on of your legally-owned products here — if you’re interested in a user’s manifesto, read this — but suffice it to say that deliberately bricking a phone if the user fiddles with it does not fall under the “reasonable” category of precautions taken by manufacturers.

Really. If you want to make it difficult to hack, that’s fine. You think your software should be enough, that’s fine. But once I pay money for the item, it’s mine, and disabling my device because you don’t like what I’m doing with it falls under the category of sabotage.

Continue reading…

SNES bed – for those who like sleeping alone

Posted: 14 Jul 2010 06:00 PM PDT


I’d buy it. But I’d install it in my secret room, where all my Pac-Man ephemera and cartridge mobiles are hung. $20,000 is a lot for an unofficially Super Nintendo-themed bed, though. Do they think that the SNES generation grew up stupid?!

Even if it does come with two iPad docks and a 250-watt amplifier with four speakers (!), that’s a lot of money. If you’re into it, though, head over to Hollandia to check out the i-Con.

[via Furninfo, TechEBlog, and Gearfuse]

This ceramic electric kettle is elegant – and gorgeous

Posted: 14 Jul 2010 05:30 PM PDT


Well-designed kitchen stuff hits me right here, guys. I don’t know why. An elegant pan or pastry scraper is more exciting to me than a Droid X or new Sony camcorder. And here’s something I thought I’d never see: an electric kettle I desperately want.

There’s something about electric kettles that’s always bothered me. Maybe it’s the sneering practicality of the things. They think they know how to boil better than me. Sure, you can do it in half the time and with far less waste, but I like my steel kettle. It might have existed a hundred years ago.

Anyway, as soon as I laid eyes on this thing, my old prejudices disappeared. I want it. I want it bad. That’s ceramic! And it comes with two mugs! The price is supposedly €99, but I can’t find it on the designer’s site or at Rowenta, for whom it was designed. Ah well. I’ll just keep on boiling the normal way.

[via NotCot]

As long as reviewing is a race, death grips will always go unnoticed

Posted: 14 Jul 2010 05:00 PM PDT


The question that is on many people’s minds as the iPhone 4 antenna drama plays itself out is “why didn’t any of the reviewers notice this?” After all, we had reviews of the iPhone from the heavy hitters quite a bit ahead of time — seasoned tech journalists who were ostensibly on the lookout for issues like this. Yet I don’t recall reading a single word about sudden signal drops, proximity sensor issues, screen discoloration, or any of the other launch issues. This may be explained by the fact that a sample size of a dozen or two may easily have avoided the launch issues, which clearly do not affect all units.

But it’s also worth considering that a phone, or media player, or game console, or operating system, really isn’t something you can review over a week or two. A restaurant you can review after a meal. A movie you can review after a viewing. A blog post, apparently, you can review just from the headline. But a device that’s going to be a part of your life for a year, two years, or more? Any review posted at before, at, or within a few days of launch should properly be considered a first impression.

Flagship devices like mobile phones and media players remain on sale for such a long time, and are used by so many people, that a serious, comprehensive, real-life review really is necessary. Two objections immediately become apparent: What about the people who want to buy it right away, don’t they deserve some sort of judgment? and Reviewers can’t live with every device that comes their way. Fair enough.

As for the reviewer: his life is a hard one. Bombarded with products, choices and sacrifices must be made to his well-being in order to effectively do his job. I myself rarely live with just one phone for more than a couple weeks, and the layout of my desk is constantly changing as new mice, keyboards, speakers, headphones, drives, and so on pass my way. Some of these can be reviewed in an afternoon, of course: an external hard drive, once tested, examined, and used for a day or two, can be reviewed with confidence. A mouse or speaker set, however, requires getting used to, and nothing less than a week or two weeks of solid use can bear fruit. And something like a phone or media player must be allowed to completely infiltrate my life before I can say a word. But to address the objection more directly: no, even a mighty reviewer like myself doesn’t have time to make a spouse of every gadget that comes my way. But I can do right by the ones that deserve it, and not make judgments where judgment should be deferred.

Systematic reviews, like those done of video cards and DPReview’s camera reviews, are self-sufficient, and provide valuable data. But not every review can or should be systematic. Sometimes, a review isn’t really even possible. Can I review an Android phone when I know the next version of the OS is coming out in a month? Can I review a media player knowing that key features are arriving in the summer? An ongoing judgment is the best, but it’s not something you can easily put in black and white. If someone asked me to review the G1 at launch, I would do so to the best of my ability, but the G1 I have is not the G1 I had at launch, and I would look back on that review guiltily, and ask people not to read it. My updated opinion is here, in my head. Ask me.

As for early adopters: what can I say? You are very likely to buy the device anyway, and return it if it’s not good. The early adopter is buying based on features, not based on judgments. And early reviews are essentially just confirming those features. They do occasionally catch glaring problems, but really, their function is not to create an opinion of the product so much as to say “yes, these are the features, and yes, they work, except for this one, which doesn’t.” As an early adopter, these problems are part of the lifestyle. You love it.

Unfortunately, the internet is a race. It’s better for your numbers to be first than to be complete, well-written, or even correct. The difference of a few minutes means a huge amount, and the pressure on a reviewer when given, say, the iPhone 4, is enormous. I don’t blame people for putting up reviews as fast as possible; it makes sense in a business-first sort of way, and on the web you can always update them. And in case you didn’t know, we do have PR people breathing down our necks the entire time. It’ll go up when it’s done, man! Quit emailing me! But these reviews should be given the weight they deserve and look forward to the long, opinionated reviews that really say something.

Where does that leave us? Nowhere, I guess. We aren’t going to stop racing towards FIRST or penning reviews that are nothing more than a checklist of features. But this fall, when someone’s contract is coming up and they’re thinking about getting an iPhone 4, which review do you think would be more useful to them? One written day-of, in which hasty video is made of its features, or one written five months later, taking into account the updates that have occurred, any ongoing hardware issues, average return rates, new features, apps, and so on — doesn’t that sound like a review you’d like to read?

Just so that this rant doesn’t appear to be completely without a point, I should say this: at CrunchGear and MobileCrunch we are cognizant of this problem with reviews, and generally try to state our purpose openly. “First impressions” or “hands-on” when it’s an early or pre-release post, and “Review” only when we feel a device has been given enough time to prove itself (or when the PR wolves are at the door).

PC sales data shows growth across the board, Asus surging

Posted: 14 Jul 2010 04:00 PM PDT


The second quarter PC shipment data from IDC has hit, and it makes for interesting reading. First of all, sales are up all over the place; no one appears to be losing volume, though market share is shifting. The biggest upset has to be Asus, whose astonishing 83.6% growth over last year’s quarter puts it within a nose of overtaking Toshiba as the fifth-largest shipper of PCs in the world.

What else is going on in there? Apple shows healthy growth, but its volume is still peanuts compared with everyone else, and its share is highly concentrated in the US. I wouldn’t be surprised if Asus starts creeping up on them as the brand catches on a bit here.

The enormous growth suggests that people are opening up their wallets again after a couple years of thrift. PCs are cheap (especially Asus PCs) and you’ve got to upgrade sometime. Growth isn’t always sustained, though, and this could be a blip, especially considering the international economy issues.

Fortune cookie say, may you live in interesting times. All the big PC vendors sure are doing just that.

More info and analysis over at IDC.

Nope, iOS 4.1 doesn’t fix the iPhone 4’s death grip antenna issue.

Posted: 14 Jul 2010 03:33 PM PDT

And now, to answer the question that’s on everyone’s mind: Does the just released iOS 4.1 update fix the iPhone 4’s death grip issue — or at least appear to?

Retailers pulling Nikon D90s to prepare for new model? Update: Confirmed

Posted: 14 Jul 2010 03:00 PM PDT


The D90, Nikon’s popular and versatile enthusiast DSLR, may be approaching the end of its lifespan. It was leaked in August of 2008 and has been a solid contender ever since, despite having some serious skew on its video. And now, almost two years later, it appears to be being pulled from retail shelves in order to make room for a successor.

It is whispered that this successor will be announced at Photokina in late September. Chances are we’ll see bits and pieces of it before then, just like last time. This is all unconfirmed, but stay tuned.

Confirmed: Nikon Rumors reports that one of the major retailers took the first step, and marked it as a clearance item, with limited availability. So long to a great camera.

Video: The first Chevy Volt commercial advertises silence

Posted: 14 Jul 2010 02:30 PM PDT

Chevrolet apparently has started advertising the Chevy Volt but you won’t see anything about batteries, expected range, the price or any of the Volt’s novel traits — only silence. Click through for the ad spot.

Barnes & Noble’s Blackboard partnership means college students will see nook everywhere they go

Posted: 14 Jul 2010 01:50 PM PDT

Barnes & Noble continues to makes inroads into the education, um, space. It just announced that it has teamed up with Blackboard, the Web site/software suite that is used in colleges all over the U.S. (Lord knows I had to use it all the time.) The deal should ensure that college students, starting with the upcoming fall semester, have easy access to electronic textbooks.

It’ll work like this. You log into Blackboard and click over to your literature class. There you’ll find links to all (if any) electronic versions of the books you need to read for the semester, making it easy to purchase and download a semester’s worth of books in no time at all.

There’s also possibilities for NOOKstudy-Blackboard integration. View all your Blackboard assignments from within NOOKstudy, that type of thing. I mean, I guess that’s what we could be looking at.

Maybe even more important to Barnes & Noble: brand awareness. Yeah, we’ve obviously all know of Barnes & Noble, but from now on if a college student logs into his or her Blackboard account and sees notes everywhere to the effect of "Need this book? Download it right now on your nook!" Considering how absolutely ubiquitous Blackboard is, that’s an awful lot of college students who will be within a few mouse clicks of learning more about nook, NOOKstudy, etc.

Go, team, maybe!

Microsoft exec: iPhone 4 may be Apple’s Vista – perhaps, but show me Microsoft’s iPhone

Posted: 14 Jul 2010 01:14 PM PDT

I try not to take sides on these little skirmishes between Mac and PC. In matters of taste, there is no dispute. And I’m fine with a little railing on both sides — to a point. But when Microsoft’s COO decides to tease Apple, saying “It looks like the iPhone 4 might be their Vista, and I’m okay with that,” I have to step in. This kind of attitude seems a bit out-of-place from a company that just had to retire a years-in-development project that they spent a billion on — due to rumored triple-digit sales.

I’ll tell you what, Microsoft. I’m going to give you this one. The criticism is deserved, after all — the iPhone 4 may in fact be Apple’s Vista in a way. But you don’t get to say that. Because if you do, someone might point out that Microsoft has never put out a single product that has so completely fascinated the consumer world as the iPhone. And chances are you never will. It’s better to have a Vista of an iPhone than to never have an iPhone to begin with.

Maybe I’m taking it too seriously. They’re just some off-the-cuff remarks that probably drew a laugh at the Microsoft conference Turner was keynoting. Think of it this way: it’s as serious as you want it to be, like emails from Jobs. “Non-issue, just avoid holding it in that way” — words will live in infamy or obscurity, as either an example of colossal callousness or just a busy guy giving a user a holdover fix. I lean towards the idea that the leaders of a company embody that company, and so need to watch what they say.

Apart from a few successes like Xbox Live and, of course, the heyday of Windows Mobile, Microsoft’s consumer electronics arm has always been a fount of mediocrity. Admit it, Microsoft. The occasional great devices, like the Surface, Zune HD, Arc Mouse, or the new 360, are outnumbered a hundred to one by anonymous-looking mice, uninspired handsets, and interesting projects hamstrung by bad design, bad advertising, or bad management.

The iPhone 4, flawed as it may be, is also (in my opinion) one of the most advanced and beautiful pieces of electronics ever made. Even when I’m in my worst anti-Apple moods, I never suggest otherwise. Apple may have had its worst launch ever, but it was still better than every consumer electronics launch Microsoft has ever done. Pride doesn’t suit you in this area, I’m afraid. You’ve got a lot of things to be proud about, but your (non)response to the iPhone isn’t one of them.

I’d like nothing more, Microsoft, than for Windows Phone 7 to come out barking like an attack dog and tear off a piece of the market with its enormous, sans-serif teeth. But before you start talking about an iPhone being Apple’s Vista, try to remember just how many Vistas Microsoft has weighing it down — and how many iPhones.

Apollo 16 site photographed from orbit

Posted: 14 Jul 2010 01:00 PM PDT

I love seeing the shots that NASA has been releasing from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter! The latest is from the Apollo 16 site, and they really timed this one right. The LRO was passing over the site exactly at noon (local time of course) so there’s a minimum amount of shadowing, and a maximum amount of contrast.

The resolution on the picture is truly amazing, you can see where the lunar module landed, where they parked the LRV, and even trails where the astronauts walked across the surface. There’s even a mark leading to where the astronauts conducted moonquake experiments by setting off explosives! This picture is much cleaner then the previous shot, which showed the Apollo 14 site, but was taken at a different time of day and had significantly more shadowing.

USB Clip memory stick – why didn’t I think of that?

Posted: 14 Jul 2010 12:27 PM PDT

Much like the binder clip cable management system, this is one of those products that make you go “duh, why didn’t I think of that”. Designer Arman Emami just won the 2010 Red Dot design award for his latest creation, the USB Clip Memory stick.

The Clip Memory stick works much like a binder clip or paper clip, and attaches to a piece of paper (or presentation document). I suspect these are going to end up being everywhere at trade shows like CES, where press materials are handed out on USB sticks all the time. What’s interesting (at least to me) is that the designer typically works on commercial and residential real estate, not technology products. Of course these are currently just a concept, but I suspect we’ll see the Clip Memory stick showing up on the retail market soon.

[via Ready Made]

Sony’s new NEX-VG10 Exmor camcorder looks great… but who’s it for?

Posted: 14 Jul 2010 11:50 AM PDT


We saw the new NEX camcorder teased about a month ago, and thought it looked pretty sweet. But it’s Sony, we thought. They might still mess this one up. And as it turns out… well, not really. It’s looking like a pretty solid camera system. The only trouble is the price. Update: AND the fact that it only shoots in 60i.

What you’ve got here is an interchangeable-lens camcorder at 1080p1080i — a nice one, to be sure, but let’s be honest: at $2000 you’ve got your pick. For that price you can pick up (off the top of my head, since I’m a Canon man) a 7D, which has similar imaging capabilities, or for a little more you can even get a 5D mk II, which has the advantage of full-frame. What does the NEX-VG10 have against these?

I’m glad you asked. It does have silent and quick autofocus while shooting movies, something those other cameras are notoriously incapable of. It also has a built-in accessory shoe for a really nice-looking shotgun mic, though of course that runs you a little extra, and the Canons have accessory capability as well. The EVF could be handy, but consumers and even prosumers these days tend to prefer a nice, high-resolution, bright LCD (update: the LCD is 921k dots, the EVF is 1152k dots. Nice and high-res). The one on the T2i (which also shoots 1080p) and 7D is outstanding. And it seems to me that consumers opting for a traditional camcorder body will be more budget-minded, while enthusiasts looking to spend that kind of money will be looking very carefully at the DSLR competition.

I don’t want to dismiss the new system completely, but $2000 seems a really hard sell when you’ve got 720p pocket cams going for $100 and devices with similar (though not identical) capabilities selling for hundreds or dollars less. The new compact lens system is nice, and if you want to buy into the new E-mount lenses, this is a great buy. But the lens system has yet to prove itself, and this camcorder will have to set itself apart from the competition, before we can give it a recommendation.

More information and images can be found at the press release.

Update: OH NO it’s 60i! You can only shoot at 1080p/60i. That kills it for me. What about high-speed, or 24p, or 25p? Or any p at all?

GM: Chevy Volt Battery Warranty is eight years/100k miles

Posted: 14 Jul 2010 11:45 AM PDT


The Chevy Volt is finally coming together. GM just went public with the details surrounding its battery warranty and it’s on the same level as the Prius’s. The auto maker will cover the Volt’s LG Chem lithium-manganese pack for eight years or 100,000 miles. This comes after extensive testing over a three-year period in which testers logged over 1 million miles of driving and 4 million hours on the battery packs. Needless to say that GM tested the entire system thoroughly.

GM-Volt posted some of the Volt’s key features that actually validate a lot of the questions I had during my Volt mule test drive last year.

Thermal Management: the intrinsic thermal management system allows teh pack and car to operate flawlessly from -13 degrees Fahrenheit (-25 C) and as high as 122 degrees Fahrenheit (+50 C). In cold weather the cells are warmed by the generator and in cold weather they are chilled.
Diagnostics: there are more than 500 diagnostic tests on the pack that run 10 times per second. 85 percent ensure the pack is operating safely, 15 percent ensure durability.
Cell design: the LG chemistry ensures high power and long life.
Energy Management: by not fully charging or discharging the battery ensures the longest possible life.

It’s good to see GM backing the Volt’s battery system with a long warranty. Batteries degrade over time and since the Volt’s powertrain is directly powered from the battery unlike in a traditional hybrid where they simply assist, owners should not have to worry about their life for a while.
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