bits and pieces
Chrome for Android beta launches with place shifting, faster rendering, and card view
www.theverge.com
Chrome for Android — the long-rumored, oft-requested grand unification of Google's mobile and desktop browsing technologies — has just been announced today, and it's being made available immediately as a beta release for phones and tablets running Ice Cream Sandwich. Though Android's existing browser has long shared bits and...
iPad 3 to Include Haptic Display Technology to Provide On-Screen Textures?
www.macrumors.com
A series of last-minute rumors and speculation are suggesting that the iPad 3 might include haptic technology that would give on-screen objects texture. The rumors have linked Finnish company Senseg with Apple and have been fueled by Apple's media event invitations carrying the tagline "We have something you really have...
Hands-on: GitHub for Windows takes the pain out of using git
arstechnica.com
GitHub uses the git distributed version control system originally created by Linus Torvalds to help manage Linux's development as its backbone. It provides project hosting, bug tracking, and more, all wrapped up in a powerful Web interface. GitHub's most important feature is perhaps its trivial ability to fork projects. It...
The Official Guide to Google Drive
www.readwriteweb.com
Google Drive, the long-awaited file storage and syncing service, launches today. If you follow tech news closely, you've seen bits and pieces of the news leaking out over the past two weeks. We've tested it and we've talked to the team leaders. Forget all the speculation. Here's what Google...
Merger To Form 6,000-Employee Company That Tackles Giant Mobile Problem
www.businessinsider.com
When it comes to building and managing corporate applications for iPhones, Android, BlackBerry and everything in between, there are countless companies working on bits and pieces but almost none doing it all. Symphony Service and Teleca announced a merger today to create a 6,100 employee company that hopes to...
Want to try your hand at Windows Phone development? This should make it easier
venturebeat.com
Microsoft has just released hundreds of pre-built mobile app components, open-source projects, and SDKs for Windows Phone development into the wild. The new components and APIs come via Verious, a marketplace for plug-and-play bits and pieces for mobile applications. And from what we’ve been hearing from mobile developers around...
What if the secret feature of the iPad 3 is a new touch-feedback technology?
thenextweb.com
For weeks now I’ve been talking to developers, Apple sources and friends about whether there might be a major new feature being announced with the iPad 3 tomorrow. The bits and pieces that I’ve managed to uncover are tantalizing and have led me to believe that at least one major...
That Windows 8 experience? Confusing. Confusing as hell.
www.guardian.co.uk
Trying out Windows 8 on the desktop gives a strange feeling: there's a solid update to Windows 7, and then there's a strange interface which jumps context. Plus you can't join a device to a domain? Whose idea was that?On Wednesday 29 February, Microsoft released the consumer preview edition of...
How Coldcalling Deadmau5 On Twitter Earned One Artist His Big Break
pandodaily.com
When I hear anyone talking about “the power of social media”, my brain immediately flips to thoughts of self-appointed gurus with uber-douche titles like “Twitter Ninja” or “Friendster Rockstar”. I can’t help it. It’s pretty much pavlovian at this point. In this case, it really is a story of...
Why I doubted Facebook could build a billion dollar business, and what I learned from being horribly wrong
andrewchenblog.com
Facebook, early 2006 Sometimes, you need to be horribly, embarrassingly wrong to remind yourself to keep an open mind. This is my story of my complete failure to understand Facebook’s potential. In 2006, I was working on a new ad network business that experimented a lot with targeting ads...
Why I doubted Facebook could build a billion dollar business, and what I learned from being horribly wrong
Microsoft unveils Surface tablet
www.bgr.com
Microsoft on Monday announced the Surface tablet during a press conference in Los Angeles, California. Rumors leading up to the event suggested that the Redmond-based company had an own-brand tablet in store, and a leaked spec sheet that emerged on Monday pointed to an Xbox-focused slate that would merge...
Midweek roundup: Windows Phone bits and pieces
thenextweb.com
Good morning, evening, and afternoon TNW readers, depending on where you are. This post is a brief compendium of several Windows Phone newsy bits and rumors. Instead of breaking them down into several posts, we’re compiling the group here to save you time. Of course, if you want to get a good...
Incident Tech's gTar gets teased, remains largely silent (video)
www.engadget.com
What you see above is the gTar, an upcoming electronic musical instrument from Bay Area-based startup, Incident Technologies. It's got what appears to be an iPhone docked in the pick-guard and it looks pretty cool lit up in the teaser video after the break. Beyond that, there's not a ton...
Microsoft’s coming Windows Phone ‘Summit,’ what is it all about?
thenextweb.com
Hot and fresh in our inbox is a note from Microsoft, announcing a ‘summit’ for Windows Phone on the 20th. It’s a morning event, and is, apparently, not exceptionally exclusive. Everyone is going to be there. Of course, TNW will be in attendance. What is this all about? Via Microsoft,...
Google+ hits 250M total accounts, more than 150M monthly active users
venturebeat.com
Google announced some major milestones for its Google+ social network at the Google I/O developer conference today. Google+ now has more than 250 million total accounts, and more than 150 million monthly active users, Google’s Vic Gundotra announced at the event. More than 50 percent of Google+ users sign in...
Meet Dharmesh Mehta, Microsoft’s man with his head firmly in the cloud
thenextweb.com
Dharmesh Mehta, Senior Director Windows and Windows Live Division at Microsoft is currently on a European tour. Through jet lag and a hard travel itinerary he may not know what time it is, but he certainly sees how the future will work with cloud based computing and Microsoft’s Skydrive. If...
DreamWorks Incubates a Mobile Video Editing App Called PTCH
allthingsd.com
A team spun off from the studio behind “Shrek” and “Madagascar” wants to make the next Instagram. DreamWorks Animation is incubating a new social photo and video app called PTCH, which is being independently built by DreamWorks CTO Ed Leonard and a small team he’s put together from inside and...
The Magnet Bay: file sharing site does away with .torrent files today
www.theverge.com
Today is the big day — popular BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay is no longer hosting .torrent files, and moving entirely to magnet links. At least, sort of. According to TorrentFreak, the Bay is planning to keep torrents with 10 peers or less on the site for the time...
Marc Benioff: Dropbox And Square Have Margins Like "We've Never Seen In Enterprise Software" (CRM)
www.businessinsider.com
Marc Benioff is in awe of some of the cloud startups that followed in his footsteps: Box and Square. He's happy to boast of Salesforce.com's 37% growth for 2011 (and 38% revenue growth in its last quarter). BUT this doesn't hold a candle to the growth of younger cloud software...
With Google Now, Google search is getting ready for Project Glass
gigaom.com
Google just unveiled a major revamp of its mobile search experience, dubbed Google Now, at its Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco. Google Now is part of Android 4.1, code-named Jelly Bean, and it brings a new paradigm for search: Instead of letting users search for content when they...
Whose data centers are more efficient? Facebook’s or Google’s?
gigaom.com
Google is a total champ when it comes to its infrastructure, and a blog post Monday shows the search giant is running its data centers at a power usage effective (PUE) of 1.14. The PUE metric is a measure of how much extra power is required to provide each unit...
What Facebook Understood But Yahoo Didn’t: The Magic Of A Billion Dollars
pandodaily.com
It’s not really a surprise that companies get less innovative the bigger they get. Bureaucracy creeps in. Talent gets watered down. You can’t move as quickly. Too many cooks in the kitchen; nine women can’t grow a baby in a month; an engineer team should be fed with two pizzas...
AmazonSupply opens for business. Now bring on the 3-D printers.
gigaom.com
Amazon today opened AmazonSupply, a store dedicated to the bits and pieces associated with running a small office, building your own garage robots (or science lab) or a manufacturing facility. And yes, it will also sell centrifuges. All I could think after seeing this story was, “Just wait until Amazon...
Here's Why Windows 8 Is Shaping Up To Be A Giant Bomb For Business Users (MSFT)
www.businessinsider.com
With every passing week, the feeling about Windows 8 is that it's going to be another Microsoft Vista. That's code for big expensive flop. Loads of reviews have been written about Windows 8, including ours. Some loved it. Some hated it. But they all say the same thing: Windows 8...
Tim Cook’s Apple: the one Apple story to read today
gigaom.com
Credit: Bowen Liu/Apple Inc. via Bloomberg The biggest challenge for Apple over the next several years will be how it adjusts under the leadership of Tim Cook. We’ve seen bits and pieces of what this new era means for Apple, but Fortune writer Adam Lashinsky has a cover story on Thursday...
Apple creating a Food & Drink category in the App Store
venturebeat.com
Congratulations, foodies, you’re getting your very own place in Apple’s App Store soon. Apple is creating a “Food & Drink” category for all those appetizing applications. According to MacStories, the company sent out an e-mail to developers announcing the new category, which will go live “in the next few...
LG VS930 pops up at the FCC, may be world-roaming Optimus LTE II for Verizon
www.engadget.com
Verizon may be getting into a regular habit of carrying high-end LG smartphones. If the FCC is anything to go by, the Optimus LTE II could be next to get the Big Red treatment: a filing has just emerged for the VS930, a likely successor to the VS910 (Revolution)...
Shawn Fanning’s & Sean Parker’s Airtime to launch in June
gigaom.com
Airtime, the social video startup founded by Napster co-founders Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, is going to publicly launch on June 5, according to a tweet the company sent out Tuesday. We look forward to saying hello on June 5th. Sign up to be first in line. airtime.com— Airtime (@airtime_inc)...
Macmillan’s Tor/Forge goes DRM-free
paidcontent.org
Macmillan science fiction/fantasy imprint Tor/Forge — the publisher of titles like Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game” — will sell its e-books DRM-free as of “early July 2012,” the company announced today. “Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time,” said Tor/Forge president and publisher Tom...
Why I Doubted Facebook Could Build A Billion Dollar Business, And What I Learned From Being Horribly Wrong
www.businessinsider.com
Facebook, early 2006Sometimes, you need to be horribly, embarrassingly wrong to remind yourself to keep an open mind. This is my story of my failure to understand Facebook’s potential. In 2006, I was working on a new ad network business that experimented a lot with targeting ads with social...
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