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The Rise Of The Mobile-Born
Nov 09, 5:00AM
Mobile is now the channel of choice for everyone, but even those of us who use technology with great alacrity are still digital immigrants. The Mobile Born is a generation of kids that have been raised while gnawing on the equivalent of a supercomputer -- otherwise known as mom's smartphone.
Yes, High-Skill Immigration Reform Is Still Dead This Calendar Year
Nov 09, 12:28AM
Breaking non-news out today: Immigration reform is dead in 2013, meaning that high-skill immigration reform is also kaput this year. We already mostly knew that, but the third-ranking Republican in the House confirmed the fact today.
"F*ck You, Google+", An Adorable Song About YouTube's New Comments
Nov 09, 12:23AM
YouTubers are not pleased about being forced onto Google+ for commenting, and one girl took a stand in the cutest, most profane way imaginable. "You ruined our site and called it integration, I'm writing this song just to vent our frustration. Fuck you Google Plusssssss!"
Intel Has Acquired Kno, Will Push Further Into The Education Content Market With Interactive Textbooks
Nov 09, 12:00AM
We had a tip about, have now confirmed, Intel's latest acquisition: Kno, the education startup that started life as a hardware business and later pivoted into software -- specifically via apps that let students read interactive versions of digitized textbooks. Intel was among Kno's investors -- the company had raised some $73.4 million in funding since being founded in 2009, with Intel leading the Series C round in April, 2011 (in the $37.5m round, Intel invested $20m). 
Why Apple Bought $578M Worth Of Sapphire In Advance
Nov 08, 10:41PM
Apple is building a manufacturing plant in Arizona that will be used by GT Advanced Technologies to make sapphire crystals for use in its products. Apple currently uses sapphire in its home buttons and camera lens covers, but several details about the material itself and the nature of its deal with GT indicate that it could be expanding its interests in the hard crystalline substance over the next several years. Sapphire, specifically synthetic, manufactured sapphire, has several properties that make it of interest to Apple. First of all, sapphire is superior to glass, even Corning's Gorilla Glass material, in several ways. Synthetic sapphire has no color, as it's a single crystal grown to be optically transparent — making it look very similar to glass. But it's also extremely hard — 9 on the Mohs scale — which means better scratch resistance. "Chemically strengthened glass can be excellent, but sapphire is better in terms of hardness, strength, and toughness," says Matthew Hall, Director of the Center for Advanced Ceramic Technology at the Kazuo Inamori School of Engineering at Alfred University. "The fracture toughness of sapphire should be around 4 times greater than Gorilla Glass – about 3 MPa-m0.5 versus 0.7 MPa-m0.5, respectively." The hardness of sapphire will make it resistance to 'flaw initiation' (aka starting to scratch) and its 'toughness' is how it resists fracture once a flaw has begun (cracking altogether). This strength doesn't come without a bit of cost, Hall notes. "The density of Gorilla Glass is 2.54 g/cm3 while sapphire is 3.98 g/cm3. Given equal-sized pieces, Gorilla Glass will always be lighter." The counter-point to the greater weight is that Apple could use thinner pieces of sapphire due to its greater strength overall. This would result in weight and thickness reduction, which is something Apple is very conscious about. You may have noticed that the latest iPad Air was reduced in thickness in part due to its use of thinner glass and IGZO display panels. Sapphire has fairly good optical qualities, as well, says Hall. Both materials have roughly similar absorption properties, though sapphire's refractive index is a bit higher, which would mean a tradeoff in light transmission for durability. "Gorilla Glass is about 1.5 while sapphire is about 1.76 — the exact number is wavelength-dependent," Hall says. "The reflection that occurs at an interface is directly proportional to the refractive index difference between the two media creating that
Time Is Running Out To Enter Our Hardware Battlefield In Las Vegas
Nov 08, 10:32PM
Time is running out to apply to Hardware Battlefield. Have you submitted an application but didn't complete it? What the heck, man! Do it! Do it now! This is shaping up to be one of the coolest things we've ever done and it's all set on the amazing backdrop of CES in Vegas this January. We're going to have some amazing judges, some amazing entries, and some amazing times. We want you to apply. 
Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs
Nov 08, 10:22PM
'Ello ello! Welcome to another edition of TIDWRTWHUFOO. Today we're looking at flying drones, crabby bots that climb your body, and a robot that can roll, spin, and eventually decapitate you and/or your pets. Good times! 
Quick, Everyone IPO
Nov 08, 10:07PM
Facebook's share price tanked upon IPO, scaring plenty of private companies away from the public markets. But with its eventual recovery and now the stellar performance of Twitter's IPO out the gates, the Wall Street bell suddenly has a much nicer ring to it. Just in the last few days we've heard of Square, Box, and Seamless moving forward with IPO plans.
Twitter Drops 7.24% In Its Second Day Of Trading, Burning $2.3B In Market Cap
Nov 08, 10:00PM
Twitter priced its IPO at $26 per share. It opened yesterday at $45.10, closing the day at $44.90. Today it closed at $41.65, down 7.24%. Using a fully diluted share count (705,098,594), Twitter’s valuation fell $2.3 billion in regular trading. That’s more than half a Snapchat. The company’s massively successful IPO led some to claim that Twitter mispriced its offering. The company originally indicated that it would price the offering as low as $17 per share, a firm discount to its final $26 offer price. The markets and larger technology industry will closely watch Twitter in its first few quarters, given that the degree of its success – or weakness – as a public company will set the temperature for other companies’ IPO paths. Keep in mind that Twitter, even after this correction – call it what you will – is valued richly. As Peter Kafka of AllThingsD points out, “Twitter investors are valuing the company at the same level as LinkedIn, even though LinkedIn generates twice as much revenue. And they're valuing Twitter at about a fifth of Facebook, even though Facebook has more than ten times more revenue.” That implies that Twitter investors are expecting the company to outperform comparable, and rival firms. In other news, barometric pressure in San Francisco fell from 30.09 inches this morning, to 30.01 inches by the end of trading on the East Coast. Temperature moved in the opposite direction, rising from a chilly 52 degrees in the city this morning to a far warmer 63 degrees by the end of the regular trading. It isn’t clear that impact this will have on Twitter’s stock price tomorrow, but we’re digging into that now. Top Image Credit: Flickr
Gillmor Gang Live 11.08.13 (TCTV)
Nov 08, 9:11PM
Gillmor Gang - Danny Sullivan, Robert Scoble. Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor. Live recording session today at 1pm Pacific time. Like us on Facebook at Facebook.com/gillmorgang
Elop Is Going To Do What Now?
Nov 08, 8:56PM
The technology press is abuzz this morning after Bloomberg published an article concerning what Nokia's - and soon Microsoft's again! - Stephen Elop would do to reform Microsoft should he be selected as its next CEO. He is widely tipped as a leading candidate for that role as he is set to return to Microsoft as an executive vice president once the sale of Nokia's hardware business to the Redmond-based software giant is consummated. 
Oppo's First Cyanogen-Modded Smartphone Will Launch In December
Nov 08, 8:04PM
As much as I love stock Android sometimes you just need something different, and that's essentially been the guiding mission of the folks over at Cyanogen Inc. They've made plenty of strides with their customized version of Android over the past few months, but now they're on the verge of a big milestone -- after officially revealing the thing back in September, Chinese OEM Oppo announced earlier today that its first Cyanogen-modded smartphone will launch internationally in December. Wait, what? Who's Oppo? 
This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Xbox One, Nexus 5, And The HTC Gramohorn
Nov 08, 8:00PM
Thanksgiving is around the corner, which means that the Holiday season is actually upon us. And you know what that means? Electronics makers are literally spewing gadgets at us in time for gift-giving season. 
Flash Sale App Tophatter Adds Android Version, Brings Its Auctions To Canada
Nov 08, 7:49PM
Tophatter, a flash sales site that sells apparel, makeup and electronics through 90-second auctions, released its Android app today and announced its first international expansion. The app is now available in Canada and plans to go into the UK and Ireland within the next few weeks. South Africa, Australia and New Zealand are the next markets in the startup's sights. 
Guitar Hero Creators Launch Singtrix, A Karaoke Lover's Dream
Nov 08, 7:32PM
What's your karaoke song? If you have an instant answer to that (or even if you don't), pay attention. The guys that helped create Guitar Hero, John Devecka, Charles Huang, and Kai Huang, along with music gaming pioneer and production company owner Eric Berkowitz, have today introduced a new product called Singtrix.
Impala For iPhone Identifies Your Photos Using Artificial Intelligence, Organizes Them For You
Nov 08, 6:37PM
A new mobile application called Impala is picking up where Everpix left off, in terms of automatically categorizing your photo collections using computer vision technology. Once installed, the app works its way through your entire photo library on your iPhone, sorting photos into various categories like “outdoor,” “architecture,” “food,” “party life,” “friends,” “sunsets,” and more. But there’s a key difference between what Impala does and how Everpix worked. Impala’s mobile app has no server-side component – that is, your photos aren’t stored in the cloud. The software that handles the photo classification runs entirely on your device instead. Impala is not a polished and professional app like Everpix was, of course, and photo classification is its only trick, while Everpix did much more. But its classification capabilities aren’t terrible. In tests, it ran through thousands of my iPhone photos over the course of some 20 minutes or so, placing photos into various albums, some more accurate than others. For example, it did well as gathering all the “food” and “beach” photos, and could easily tell the difference between “men,” “women,” and “children,” but it classified some beach scenes as “mountains,” and photos of my dog under “cats.” But that latter one is by design, laughs Harro Stokman, Impala’s creator and CEO at Euvision Technologies, which develops the software. “We don’t like dogs,” he says. The app, in its present form, is not meant to be a standalone business at this time, but more of an example of the technological capabilities of the company’s software. Euvision Technologies, Stokman explains, was spun out from the University of Amsterdam where he earned his PhD in computer vision. The technology that makes Impala possible has been in development for over 10 years, he tells us. Today, many of Euvision eight-person team also work at the university, which owns a 15% stake in the company. Meanwhile, Euvision has the rights to commercialize the technology, but doesn’t have outside funding. Instead, it licenses its software, which until today was only available as a server technology used by nearly a dozen clients ranging from the Netherlands police department (for tracking down child abuse photos), to a large social media website, which uses the technology for photo moderation on its network. By putting Impala out there on the App Store, the hope is now to introduce the technology to even more potential licensing customers. Stokman notes that the
Neat Cuts The Cord With The New NeatConnect Scanner
Nov 08, 6:30PM
Late-night TV commercial stalwarts Neat may seem a little chintzy at first blush but rest assured that their products - essentially very simple document scanners - are surprisingly good. Their latest version, the $499 NeatConnect, is a completely wireless scanning solution that lets you scan documents to services like Dropbox, Evernote, Box, Skydrive, and Google Drive. You can also scan documents into Neat's own cloud solution, NeatCloud. 
Banana Republic, CNNMoney And CNBC Among Top Twitter Accounts During TWTR IPO
Nov 08, 6:03PM
Data from social media analytics companies Crimson Hexagon and Topsy give insight into the chatter during Twitter's IPO using data gleaned from (what else?) tweets. Most of the accounts that produced the top tweets are expected (like Twitter's official account and major news outlets such as CNN), but there were a few surprises. 
Tech Lobbying Group The Internet Association Comes To Airbnb's Side In NY Attorney General Case
Nov 08, 5:24PM
Airbnb has been in the midst of a fight with local regulators in New York, where it was recently subpoenaed by the Attorney General's office for a wide-ranging amount of user data. Well today the company received broad support from the tech industry as a whole, as Washington, DC-based lobbying group The Internet Association has come to the company's side in that fight by filing an amicus brief today. 
Green Throttle Ends Arena Support As The Android Game Microconsole Herd Begins To Thin
Nov 08, 4:35PM
Guitar Hero creator Charles Huang founded Green Throttle, a Santa Clara-based startup with $6 million in funding, to build out multiplayer Android gaming for the living room. Now, the company says it’s closing the door on that mission for now. It’s a mission shared by others including Ouya, BlueStacks and its GamePop, and Nvidia’s Shield, but now the space is a little less crowded. The question is, was Green Throttle a canary indicating the whole market’s unstable, or just or just part of the natural culling of a herd centered on a real, but limited opportunity? Green Throttle worked by providing an Arena app in the Play Store and Amazon Appstore for Android, which worked with their Atlas Bluetooth controllers. It had created some games on its own, and partnered with third-party devs to provide an SDK that would let their software work with Arena, too. It’s a slightly different vision than that espoused by consoles like Ouya and GamePop, and Green Throttle had a more concentrated focus on multiplayer interaction, but it’s still not a confidence-inspiring development for anyone watching this space. The closure involves the end of support and removal of Arena from the digital app stores where it appears. The app will still work with existing games tailored to Arena for those who already own it, and the Atlas controllers will work as normal, too. The controllers are compatible with any titles that support Bluetooth HID as well, and Green Throttle will continue to sell the controllers, too. Green Throttle still seems like it will exist, as it says to watch for “the evolution” of the company. That could indicate that there’s been an acquisition of some kind, but it’s tough to say at this point. We’ve reached out to Green Throttle for more information, but for now, it’s hard to come up with a very positive spin. Android gaming is something many are betting on, and Nvidia’s CEO was positively bubbly about the possibilities earlier today on an investor call. So far, though, no one company has managed to come up with the right formula to really get the ball rolling on consumer demand.
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