Windows Phone 7: Mango update will have 500 new features, released this fall

Microsoft shed some light on the first big update to its Windows Phone 7 operating system, Mango, during a press event in New York City today.

The company explained how it was entering into an already crowded mobile market and realized that phones were becoming little more than app launchers. Presumably, Mango will put the user at the center of the experience and not the operating system, according to Andy Lees.

The Mango update heavily … Continue Reading

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 trailer debuts

Activision Blizzard released its not-so-secret revelation today: a trailer for its next blockbuster game, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, which debuts Nov. 8. The video game is the latest installment in a multibillion-dollar franchise that has shattered all records for best-selling games of all time.

The first-person shooter game is being made by Activision Blizzard’s Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games studios. Last year’s Call of Duty Black Ops game sold more than $650 million … Continue Reading

VentureBeat hires Wired’s Dylan Tweney, and still looking for more awesome team members

Big changes are afoot here at VentureBeat, and we’re looking to staff up with more full-time writers, freelancers, and reporting interns.

To wit, we’re extremely delighted to announce that Dylan Tweney, long senior editor of Wired, has joined VentureBeat as executive editor. Dylan brings 15 years of experience, is unflappable in character and has a way of making complicated IT technology understandable. Before Wired, he worked at Ziff Davis Media and Mobile Magazine.  He’ll be … Continue Reading

BillGuard alerts users about questionable credit card charges

New startup BillGuard is betting there’s a market for people who would like an extra set of eyes monitoring their credit card statements for scams, billing errors, unauthorized charges and anything else that seems odd.

The company, which made its public debut at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York City Monday, touts its services as “antivirus for our bills” because it scans each credit card transaction and sends out alerts for all questionable charges.… Continue Reading

Omar Hamoui's Churn Labs creates Gnonstop Gnomes

Omar Hamoui sold AdMob to Google in 2009 for $750 million. Now he’s back — with gnomes.

The Gnonstop Gnomes social app is the first product of Churn Labs, an incubator that Hamoui created after he left Google last October. The app is the sort of zany thing that entrepreneurs can come up with when they just follow their own sense of curiosity.

Hamoui and Haider Sabri presented the app at the Techcrunch Disrupt conference … Continue Reading

Scheduled Anonymous attack on U.S. Chamber of Commerce passes without incident

It looks like an attack on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce website from hacktivist group Anonymous — scheduled for 8 p.m. eastern time Monday according to posts on online image board 4chan and news aggregator Reddit — passed without incident and the site is still online.

The attack was supposed to be part of a protest against anti-piracy legislation proposed in Congress called the “PROTECT IP” act — or “Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic … Continue Reading

New Twitter features steal more thunder from developers

Twitter announced Monday it is adding email notifications to alert users when their tweet has been retweeted or added as a favorite by someone they follow.

The addition is one of several Twitter has made to draw users back to its own platform at the risk of undercutting third-party Twitter applications that already provide notification support for retweets and favorite’d tweets.

In its pursuit to become more profitable, the company has struggled to define its … Continue Reading

Tapulous launches Lady Gaga's Born This Way Revenge app for the iPhone

Disney’s Tapulous mobile game division has launched Born This Way Revenge, a music-tapping game for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The app is one more sign that singing phenomenon Lady Gaga knows how to use technology to maximize her exposure across the globe. Besides the iPhone, she’s also available via Zynga’s FarmVille social game, Twitter and a bunch of other electronic media as well. Gone are the days when music artists viewed technology only as … Continue Reading

Symantec buys e-discovery firm Clearwell for $390M

Security tech giant Symantec said today it is acquiring electronic discovery management firm Clearwell Systems for $390 million.

Symantec makes popular Norton computer protection software but it has been moving into the e-discovery market lately. Gartner says the e-discovery market — where software automatically sifts through legal documents in search of smoking guns — is generating $1.7 billion in sales and is growing 14 percent a year.

In the past two years, Symantec spent $2 … Continue Reading

Sonar tells you why the people around you matter

I saw plenty of startups today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York City, but Sonar, a newly launched iPhone app, stood out from the crowd because it offered up a simple new way to take advantage of the social data we’re increasingly surrounded by.

True to its name, New York City-based Sonar lets you ping specific locations to show you who is there, and most importantly, it also tells you why certain people … Continue Reading

T-Mobile doubles 4G network speed to 42Mbps in 55 markets

T-Mobile announced that it is doubling the speed of its 4G network to 42 megabits per second — more than the speed of wired broadband services — in 55 markets.

The company is also launching a new product, the Rocket 3.0 universal serial bus data stick, which can be used to access the data network via a laptop computer. The Rocket stick costs $99 (after a $50 mail-in rebate) with a data contract. The new … Continue Reading

Japan quake pushes Sony from an expected profit to a $3.2B loss

After previously predicting a profit of $857 million, Sony said it now expects to lose $3.2 billion (260 billion yen) for its fiscal year ended March 31, due to the Japanese earthquake.

In a statement today, Sony revised its previous estimates from February to account for the loss and it also lowered its revenue forecast from $88.2 billion to $87.9 billion for the year. The company’s expected operating income remained the same at $2.5 billion. … Continue Reading

Yes, Ron Conway has a new fund, and TC's Arrington is an investor

Angel investor Ron Conway’s new fund was outed today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York — by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington.

Arrington was on-stage interviewing Conway and another partner at Conway’s firm SV Angel, David Lee, when he brought up the “rumors” that they were raising a new fund (earlier this month I spotted a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealing the existence of the fund). Lee said, “Supposed to not … Continue Reading

Can e-sports be bigger than golf? (Q&A)

Justin.tv, a site that lets web browsers watch and publish live video streams, started recruiting additional developers to build an exclusive electronic sports live-streaming website for games like real-time strategy game Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty in March. It’s part of the company’s plan to make electronic sports just as popular as typical sports are in American households.

Electronic sports leagues, or e-sports, are already really popular internationally — particularly in countries like South Korea, … Continue Reading

Do@ may be the last mobile search app you need

Searching on mobile devices can be a tedious affair, especially if you’re plugging the same query into multiple apps. Do@ (pronounced do-at), a free iPhone app launching today, aims to solve that problem by letting you seamlessly search across multiple mobile web apps and services.

O- stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York City today, Do@ co-founder Ami Ben-David demonstrated the app and discussed how it revolutionizes mobile web search.

Instead of just … Continue Reading

2012 Toyota Prius V Station Wagon: First Drive Review

Toyota executives will go to extraordinary, absurd lengths to avoid defining the body style of the new 2012 Toyota Prius V.

Bob Carter, brand sales chief for Toyota Motors in the U.S., first responded with confusion over the question. Presented with a list of alternatives–sedan, hatchback, minivan, station wagon, sport utility vehicle?–he said, hesitantly, “Well, the government would define it as a station wagon.”

So let’s get one thing straight: The 2012 Toyota Prius V … Continue Reading

Square's big plans to kill the cash register

Apparently, mobile payment company Square thought its initial vision of arming merchants everywhere with credit card readers wasn’t quite ambitious enough. Today, at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York, the company announced an upgraded lineup of services, including the ability to pay by just giving the merchant your name, no credit card required.

There are now two main parts to Square’ service, which the company is promoting as a way to replace cash registers … Continue Reading

BioShock Infinite team previews next big innovation in gaming

Irrational Games, which has established its reputation as one of the most creative game studios in the industry, is slowly revealing some of the cool innovations in its next major game, BioShock Infinite. Today, the company is revealing more details about the game, which features the ability to swing on a rollercoaster in the sky and fire at enemies below. This game is innovative both in its storytelling and technology, and it is one of … Continue Reading

Social game leader CrowdStar raises $23M

Social game leader CrowdStar has raised $23 million in a first round of funding led by Intel Capital and Time Warner Investments. The company plans to use the money to double its headcount and expand on a global scale.

The deal shows that social gaming has attracted some very big investors and continues to have be a magnet for attention, but CrowdStar’s own journey shows how tough it is to compete in the market for … Continue Reading