Centzy crowdsources price info for local comparison shopping

New York City-based Centzy makes it easy for you to find the best place to get that haircut you’ve been putting off. And unlike Yelp, it has accurate pricing about local companies to let you make a fully informed decision.

The company was a part of NYC’s Entrepreneur Roundtable Accelerator’s first class, which presented on stage during ERA’s demo day today.

Centzy says less than 25 percent of local service businesses put their prices online, … Continue Reading

New York City subways to get cell service starting Tuesday

Early next week, Manhattanites will start seeing more reception bars on their smartphones while underground, thanks to a pilot program from AT&T and T-Mobile.

The rollout will begin in six stations starting Tuesday, Sept. 27, with cell service coming to more stations soon. The program will launch at stations on the 14th Street corridor and the 23rd Street line.

Cell service will be available in mezzanines and on platforms, as well as other station areas, … Continue Reading

Diablo 3 release date is in early 2012, more beta keys going out

Blizzard Entertainment’s next highly-anticipated online game, Diablo 3, won’t come out until early next year, the company’s chief executive Mike Morhaime said Friday.

Blizzard Entertainment is known for taking its time before releasing a game. So far, the strategy has worked — while some of its games face delays, it has yet to deliver a game that has not been a smash hit. Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty is expected to generate around $350 million … Continue Reading

iPhone 5 may see shipment delays due to faulty touchscreens

Apple may have to slightly delay the anticipated October launch of the iPhone 5 due to a supply chain snafu, according to reports this morning.

Digitimes, the Taiwanese blog with a history of often accurate Apple leak reporting, said today that Apple’s touchscreen manufacturer, Wintek, is having some trouble with the components for the upcoming iPhone 5.

If there are delays, this might postpone the October 4 iPhone 5 launch event with new CEO Tim … Continue Reading

Xtium raises $11.5M to expand pay-as-you-grow virtual private cloud services

Major cloud computing services provider Xtium has raised $11.5 million to expand its reach in helping mid-size companies with private cloud computing, virtual hosting and virtual disaster recovery.

Xtium is one of the leading infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers in the U.S., but it has to compete with major players like Amazon and IBM. The company offers as pay-as-you-grow model to businesses that allows for more flexibility when companies need back-end solutions like virtualization, servers and storage. … Continue Reading

Google dresses up its Product Search page

Google launched a new version of its Product Search page today that’s far more visually driven than any of its other search pages.

With the new Product Search site, it seems like Google has finally realized that retail store windows displays are an effective means of selling products.

The visuals came from Boutiques.com, a site focused on shopping for women that was created by the team behind Google-acquired site Like.com. Google plans to shut down … Continue Reading

BuzzTable aims to revolutionize how restaurants connect to customers

Restaurants spend a lot of time and energy attracting new customers, but a startup called BuzzTable says it’s far cheaper to bring back existing customers more often.

The New York City-based startup has built a mobile customer relationship management (CRM) platform that lets restaurants offer deals, loyalty programs, news and even table waiting management, directly to customers’ phones. The company was a part of NYC’s Entrepreneur Roundtable Accelerator’s first class, all of whom presented on … Continue Reading

Crimesourcing and how data criminals are like startup employees

“Organized crime is exactly that – organized,” said Marc Goodman at this week’s O’Reilly Strata conference, “especially in the field of cyber crime.”

Goodman knows a thing or two about crime. He started off as an LAPD streetcop before starting the service’s first Internet crime unit in the mid-1990s. After spending a decade working with Interpol he founded the Future Crimes Institute to track how criminals use technology.

Cybercrime is already an agile, globalised and … Continue Reading

Spotify uses Facebook exposure to open free streaming to everyone

After several months of keeping its new service invite-only, Spotify took advantage of its spotlight at the Facebook f8 event this week to open its doors to anyone who wants to use the on-demand music service. And they’ll get to do so free for six months.

One of Facebook’s big announcements Thursday was allowing for much more interactivity between users when it comes to media like music services. For example, Spotify users can use Facebook … Continue Reading

Cory Doctorow: Tech companies exploit the way we undervalue privacy

How much is your personal data worth? Will photos you post on Facebook or your Foursquare check-in data get you into trouble in five years’ time? In one of the standout talks at this week’s O’Reilly Strata Summit, author and Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow explained why people undervalue their privacy and how data-driven companies exploit this mis-pricing of privacy.

The privacy bargain we make with tech companies usually involves giving up some personal data … Continue Reading

Brands finally succeed in social games on Facebook

Facebook gamers are finally embracing well-known brands in their social games. That’s one of the conclusions from a panel on social games at the f8 conference for Facebook developers yesterday.

Sean Ryan (pictured left), director of game partnerships, pointed out that Facebook as a gaming platform has evolved from a place where original game ideas initially prospered. Now that there are 800 million users on the social network, it’s only natural for brands to take … Continue Reading

How IBM’s chip technology might lead to better water filtration (video)

Bob Allen spent much of his career as an IBM researcher exploring semiconductor manufacturing processes. But at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., Allen is now trying to use his understanding of nanotechnology and membranes to come up with better methods for water filtration. It’s funny to think that technology that was used to make the fastest chips is now being studied for use in water desalination plants, which take the salt … Continue Reading

Sean Parker says Spotify on Facebook lives up to original Napster vision (video)

Sean Parker, the billionaire of Napster and Facebook fame, is on to his next big deal: Spotify, which started in Europe and is now offering streaming music in the U.S.

In a conversation with Spotify chief executive Daniel Ek, Parker said that the rise of Spotify and other music streaming services and the debut of their integration with Facebook today fulfilled the original vision he had for Napster. And that vision wasn’t about music piracy.… Continue Reading

Basis launches heart rate monitor and health tracker

Basis Science  hopes to get us all in better shape. It will do so with its $199 heart and health monitor that you can strap around your wrist. The company is revealing today the design of its B1 Basis Band that will launch later this year.

The tracker has multiple sensors that measure your heart rate, calorie intake, sleep patterns, and other metrics. It has a liquid crystal display and looks like a digital watch. … Continue Reading

Round-up: 7 drastic Facebook changes you will probably hate

Facebook’s annual developer conference was packed with news about big changes coming to the social network.

And if past history is any guide, most of you are probably going to be outraged by the changes, at least at first.

According to informal polls, web traffic statistics and general discussion with a handful of friends, Facebook’s f8 conference wasn’t nearly as interesting for non-tech folks. At the very least, it didn’t generate the same level of … Continue Reading

The Unnamed Writer’s Room Video: f8 or h8? (video)

Facebook was the talk of the day with chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s f8 conference keynote speech and the announcement of many new features being added to the Facebook platform.

Those features included the new Timeline, a history of your activity on Facebook, which for most is a record of high school and college years all the way to marriage and work. New ways to find content through friends was also in the mix. You can … Continue Reading

Facebook wants you to influence the news your friends read

Facebook is focusing on integrating news discovery based on your friends’ activity in the news feed, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today at f8, the company’s annual developers conference.

Zuckerberg’s keynote presentation focused on the influence you have over your friends, and your ability to find various types of content through them, including news.

“We think that Open Graph creates a great opportunity to rethink the way we discover and read news,” said Zuckerberg in his … Continue Reading

Color piggybacks on Facebook announcements to lure much-needed users

Color was once an iPhone app for sharing photos with people near you. Now, founder Bill Nguyen says it’s a Facebook app for sharing photos and video.

Nguyen told the New York Times that in spite of a buzz-laden launch, the service has fewer than 100,000 active users.

So the company is taking a slingshot approach to public relations and rebranding itself as a Facebook app on the day of Facebook’s biggest announcements of the … Continue Reading

Dish and Blockbuster to introduce Netflix competitor Friday

Satellite TV operator Dish Network will announce a new Blockbuster-branded all-you-can-watch video streaming service on Friday, according to a CNNMoney report.

The move for Dish to create a Netflix rival is hardly surprising. Dish acquired Blockbuster in a bankruptcy auction for $320 million back in April and a month later Dish CEO Joe Clayton said he wanted to “take a small piece of the pie from Netflix” when it came to streaming video.

This seems … Continue Reading