After watching other hardware makers launch Google Honeycomb tablets, Toshiba’s take is ready. The Thrive ships next month but can be pre-ordered starting today. At $429, you only get 8 GB of internal storage, but a full-sized USB port and memory card slot can expand memory. Read More »
Archive for June 2011
Comcast has partnered with Skype to bring its video chat service to subscriber living rooms. With an adapter box and HD video camera, Comcast subscribers will soon be able to video chat with any other Skype users from the comfort of their living rooms. Read More »
As I noted in my post about the amnesty offered by the IRS for those with hidden overseas assets, the flexibility of web work can encourage cross-border collaborations and contracts and allow location-independent workers to live abroad for a period of time. Taxes, predictably, get complicated. Read More »
Online dating service eHarmony is using SeaMicro’s specialized Intel Atom-powered servers as the foundation of its Hadoop infrastructure, demonstrating that big data applications such as Hadoop might be a killer app for low-powered micro servers. Read More »
The “uncanny valley”– the quality of an animation or robot looking close to, but not exactly like, real life — may be set to get even smaller. MIT researchers have developed new computing techniques for reproducing the slight natural blur of moving objects in animation. Read More »
Adding more clean power to the grid will require utilities to redesign the network that transports solar electricity locally. Southern California Edison on Monday laid out its plan to make its distribution grid more responsive to the fluctuating infusion of solar electricity throughout the day. Read More »
The Spanish company behind Rojadirecta.org has sued the U.S. government, the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for seizing the domains of its website. Rojadirecta was used to trade links to live sporting events, but its former owners say the sites were legal. Read More »
We’ve spent so long consuming the news in fairly predictable formats that the new forms of journalism we are seeing all around us can be confusing. But these new forms have the potential to broaden the field immensely, and that is a good thing. Read More »
This is Swoop, the “first mobile plush for your iPhone and iPod touch.” Yes, it’s funny, but we do sleep with our phones according to quite a few studies, and that’s a really cute owl. Plus, he’s good with kids and won’t mess up the carpets. Read More »
Xeround’s cloud-based MySQL service enters general availability today, becoming the first cloud-based third-party MySQL distribution that actually requires customers to pay for the service. If it’s successful, there are plenty of other cloud database startups waiting in the wings to ride the SQL-in-the-cloud wave. Read More »
Nokia is about to lose its crown as the smartphone king, but not to Apple. Instead, Samsung will take up the mantle of top smartphone seller according to analysts at Nomura. These five reasons explain how it’s Samsung’s smartphone Galaxy and we just live in it. Read More »