Google will launch its Groupon competitor in Portland

It looks like Google is about to launch the Google Offers deals service that was first revealed in January.

The company has put up a page where people can sign up to receive deals that offer 50 percent off or more at local businesses. The Help page says the program is technically still in beta testing (Google loves to keep products in beta) and will start out in Portland, Ore. before expanding to the New … Continue Reading

Apple's iPhone/iPad location-tracking may be a bug

Why is Apple tracking the locations of iPhone and iPad users? The reason is probably less Big Brother and more Big Glitch, according to blogger John Gruber.

Gruber’s source told him that the much-maligned tracking file is just a cache for location data, and that the historical data isn’t being cleared due to a bug or an oversight. But the source didn’t downplay the implications of the issue, according to what appears to be a … Continue Reading

Nokia finalizes Microsoft contract, sees trouble ahead with Japan quake impact

Nokia and Microsoft today consummated their courtship by signing an agreement that would commit the companies to their previously announced partnership, which would see Nokia adopting Windows Phone 7 as its primary smartphone operating system.

Additionally, Nokia reported strong first quarter earnings today, but CEO Stephen Elop warned that it will be a bumpy ride for the next few quarters as the company deals with supply chain shortages stemming from the recent Japanese earthquake.

Not … Continue Reading

Google keeps up green streak with wind power purchase

Google will purchase an extra 100.8 megawatts of wind power from NextEra to power its data centers as part of a huge green push the company has made in the past month.

The wind farm should be completed later this year thanks to a direct commitment from Google Energy. The new wind farm follows Google’s 114-megawatt purchase from an Iowa wind farm last year. In 2007, the company pledged to become carbon neutral and has … Continue Reading

Meet the ActiveE, BMW's first electric car

German automobile manufacturer BMW unveiled the ActiveE, its first ride into the electric car market, at the New York Auto Show today.

The ActiveE, based on BMW’s 1-series car, is a plug-in electric vehicle that can drive about 100 miles between charges. It isn’t going directly on the market, like the Nissan Leaf or the Tesla Roadster — instead BMW will lease about 700 cars out for $500 a month over 2 years. BMW didn’t … Continue Reading

Amazon's cloud crash takes down Foursquare, Reddit and others

Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing service crashed overnight, taking down a bunch of key web sites. Affected sites included Foursquare, Reddit, Cydia, Discovr and Scvngr.

Amazon’s Elastic Cloud is a huge collection of computing power in web-connected data centers. It hosts the web sites of a bunch of businesses and is the backbone of the web services economy, making it cheap for startups to launch and scale up a web site without having to build their … Continue Reading

Nielsen: Smartphone users do care about location privacy

Earlier this week we reported on how Apple has been recording the locations of iPhone and iPad users and storing that data in unencrypted form on the device.

New research from Nielsen (carried out before the Apple story broke) shows that the majority of smartphone app users, and in particular women, are concerned about sharing their location via a mobile phone. 59 percent of women have privacy concerns versus 52 percent of male app users. … Continue Reading

Skyfire launches 4.0 version of hot Android mobile browser

Skyfire is launching version 4.0 of its popular Android mobile web browser today with a bunch of new features.

The release shows that the company is rapidly updating its mobile browsing experience. It’s reminiscent of the early competitive days of web browsing when Netscape squared off against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser on the PC, except that the battleground has moved to mobile this time. Skyfire has to square off against mobile browsing rivals such as … Continue Reading

Bo.lt launches an easy way to customize (almost) any Web page

A startup called Bo.lt just announced a new, very different way to share pages on the Web.

This is one of those ideas that took me a few minutes to wrap my head around. After all, it’s perfectly easy to share links with your friends and connections on social networks already, with or without the help of link shorteners such as Bit.ly. But Bo.lt co-founder and chief executive James Roche pointed out that what you … Continue Reading

Hitting the G-spot: How green marketeers are doing it all wrong

Just in time for Earth Day, OgilvyEarth has released a study on the gap between the intentions of U.S. consumers and their actions when it comes to green activities and products.

Proving that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, 82 percent of Americans have good green intentions, but only 16 percent are dedicated to fulfilling these intentions and over half feel guilty about their lack of action.

The study puts this down, … Continue Reading

Verizon sells 2.2M iPhones in Q1, confirms dual network iPhone 5

Verizon announced better than expected earnings this morning, and the carrier finally gave us a straight answer on iPhone sales, saying that it sold 2.2 million iPhones in the first quarter of 2011.

The carrier also let slip a major detail about the iPhone 5. In an attempt to deflect an analyst probing for details on Apple’s next phone, Verizon inadvertently mentioned that it will be a “global device” — meaning that it will work … Continue Reading

Deals & More: CrowdOptic gets $1M to track moving objects

Today’s funding announcements include services for sharing photos and predicting solar energy:

CrowdOptic lands $1M for photo service: The mobile app developer has raised a first round of funding led by its co-founder and CEO Jon Fisher with participation from angel investors and one of the company’s customers. The San Francisco-based company has developed an app that lets users get information on moving objects, such as baseball players or race cars, by taking a picture. … Continue Reading

Mopay: Mobile payment interest doubled in North America last year

Mobile payment system Mopay announced today that people charging online merchandise directly to their cell phones or landlines has nearly doubled over the last year in North America, putting local consumers on par with leading regions like Asia that have long been using the method.

The 11-year-old company lets you pay for physical merchandise with your cell phone in online transactions in 28 countries — a process also referred to as carrier billing.

As such, … Continue Reading

Ebullient VCs pour $6.4B into 661 companies in Q1

Can you feel the froth? Investment in U.S. venture-backed companies rose 35 percent in the first quarter, according to a report by Dow Jones VentureSource. Venture firms invested $6.4 billion into 661 deals in the U.S. during the quarter.

The increased activity is consistent with the buzz in the tech industry about an overall recovery, an increase in optimism, and a faster pace for innovation among startups. There is considerable discussion about whether we’re seeing … Continue Reading

Verizon is lukewarm on RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook

Though Research In Motion had stated in the past that its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet would be made available on Verizon’s 4G network, Verizon officials have said they are still evaluating whether to distribute the device, according to Reuters.

If Verizon does decide not to sell the PlayBook, it could defer current BlackBerry mobile phone users on Verizon’s network (the largest wireless carrier in the US) from buying the tablet, since loyal RIM customers are thought … Continue Reading

Twitter 'follows' Facebook by hiding Tweets

While microblogging site Twitter is quick when it comes to breaking news, the opposite is true for its ability to implement new features.

The company is testing a new feature that would hide excessive messages from users who send lots of messages in a short amount of time — an ability that has been standard in Facebook for ages.

The “hide” feature is live for a small percentage of Twitter users and may have been … Continue Reading

NComputing names ex-Citrix boss as new CEO

Desktop virtualization firm NComputing has named former Citrix executive Raj Dhingra as its new chief executive to replace founding CEO Stephen Dukker.

Redwood, Calif.-based NComputing is on a mission to turn computing upside down by replacing full-blown PCs with lightweight clients that share a single computer. It’s like a return to the old time-sharing of dumb terminals connected to mainframe computers, only different because it makes a lot more economic sense by bringing down the … Continue Reading

Qualcomm saw record revenues, thanks to smartphones

Qualcomm released its earnings report for the second quarter for fiscal year 2011, bringing in record revenues and beating its own estimates. The results were boosted by increasing demand for smartphones.

Qualcomm makes chips for smartphones using CDMA technology. The company shipped 118 million Mobile Station Modems (MSM), up 27 percent year-on-year. MSM contains the necessary chips for a mobile phone.

Qualcomm estimates that the quarterly CDMA-based mobile phone shipments were approximately 195 to 200 … Continue Reading