SNL on Verizon’s 4G marketing: “It’s an old person’s nightmare”

While it’s pretty much hit-or-miss these days, when Saturday Night Live scores, it still does so with a vengeance.

Last night the sketch comedy show aired a segment that ripped apart Verizon’s 4G LTE marketing confusion, bringing to light the biggest problems facing the smartphone market today when it comes to general consumers.

In short, there are too many devices vying for your attention (many with terrible names), and the advantages of 4G LTE seems … Continue Reading

Microsoft India Store gets hacked, passwords and usernames exposed

You can now add Microsoft to the list of companies that have recently been burned by hackers.

Microsoft’s online store in India was hacked this morning by Chinese hacker group EvilShadow team – 7z1&Ancker, reports WP Sauce. Even worse, it appears that the store’s database of usernames and passwords has been leaked as well, potentially exposing those users’ payment information.

At the time of this post, Microsoft’s India online store is still offline. We’ve dropped … Continue Reading

Google planning massive “Experience Center” and secret test labs at Googleplex

There are big changes ahead at the Googleplex, Google’s Mountain View headquarters

The company is developing a huge 120,000 square foot “Google Experience Center,” which will serve as a sort of private museum and meeting center, as well as labs for secret projects and the company’s @Home automation endeavour, reports the Mercury News.

The new buildings are big part of Google’s $120 million constructions efforts at the Googleplex, and they show how the company is … Continue Reading

Spotify takes music quality to the “extreme” on iPhone

If you’re a Spotify user with an iPhone, it’s time to pump up the volume.

The popular music streaming service has added support for extremely high quality 320 kbps music streaming and offline synchronizing — just about the best sound you can get from compressed music files.

Spotify originally offered low quality (96 kbps) and high quality (160 kbps) settings for streaming and syncing on its mobile apps, but an update over the weekend has … Continue Reading

Prepare for MacBook Pros that look like MacBook Airs

After sticking with a fairly consistent unibody MacBook Pro design for some time, Apple may be gearing up to bring design elements from its popular MacBook Air line into its more powerful models later this year.

The company is preparing a “top-to-bottom revamp” of the MacBook Pro lineup that will result in thinner unibody cases and solid-state hard drives and the loss of optical disk drives, sources tell AppleInsider.

This isn’t the first time we’ve … Continue Reading

Tesla’s new Model X is the electric car of your dreams

Electric car maker Tesla unveiled its latest electric vehicle last night, the Model X, a cross-over that offers more space than the company’s Model S sedan and original sporty Roadster.

For those waiting for a semi-affordable electric car that offers plenty of space, power, and versatility, the Model X looks to be the best option yet.

Like other cross-over vehicles, the Model X sits somewhere between a sedan and a SUV. But Tesla couldn’t help … Continue Reading

500M cheap VoIP calls propel Rebtel to 15M users

Rebtel, the second-largest voice-over IP calling company behind Skype, announced major milestones today that prove consumers just can’t get enough of cheap phone calls.

The company says that it has surpassed 15 million connected users (it’s unclear how many of those are active) since its launch in 2006. Rebtel users have made over 500 million calls on the service and have chalked up over two billion minutes of international calls.

Rebtel offers mobile and desktop … Continue Reading

Windows on ARM coming around Windows 8 release, will have Office 15 apps

Microsoft’s plan to bring Windows to ARM chips has been a curious endeavor, mainly because the company hasn’t offered up many specifics about how the new version of Windows will differ from the traditional x86 and 64-bit versions of the operating system.

That all changed today with a nearly-9,000 word blog post by Microsoft’s Windows unit president Steven Sinofsky, in which he divulged a slew of details on Windows on ARM (WOA).

The big takeaways … Continue Reading

Google’s Motorola bid set for approval, but it won’t be the end of patent wars

Google’s $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility will likely be approved by the U.S. Department of Justice next week, sources tell Bloomberg, but don’t expect Google to backtrack on Motorola’s contentious patent litigation tactics.

Purchasing Motorola will grant Google over 17,000 mobile patents in addition to the phone maker’s handset assets. Many had expected Google, which has historically argued against the trend of patent litigation from the likes of Apple and Microsoft, to use its … Continue Reading

Mark your calendars: Apple may announce iPad 3 in early March

One year after Apple unveiled the iPad 2, the company is set to announce the iPad 3 in the first week of March, sources have told AllThingsD.

The event will likely be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, which traditionally houses Apple’s largest announcements. The timing makes sense for Apple since it launched the iPad 2 in early March last year.

There’s no word yet on when the iPad … Continue Reading

Driving app Waze builds its own Siri for hands-free voice control

In an effort to cut driving distractions even further, the crowdsourced driving app Waze today has added the ability for fully hands-free voice control to report traffic situations — bringing Siri-like functionality to the free app before Apple has released its own Siri API.

Waze’s solution is actually more advanced than Siri in one key way: you don’t need to awkwardly hold down any buttons to activate voice commands. Instead, Waze’s voice controls are activated … Continue Reading

Don’t call it a beta: Microsoft to unveil Windows 8 Consumer Preview on Feb. 29

Microsoft’s long-awaited Windows 8 release for public testing will be unveiled at a press event in Barcelona on February 29, tying in with the Mobile World Congress occurring at the same time, the company announced today.

Originally referred to as the Windows 8 beta, the release will instead be called the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, which gives us a pretty good idea as to Microsoft’s target audience (hint: not the techies running earlier builds of … Continue Reading

Pogoplug now powers 1M personal clouds, expands retail and mobile presence

Who needs Amazon’s cloud storage when you can turn your own hard drive into a cloud-enabled device? That’s the question Pogoplug has been asking consumers with its family of personal cloud devices, which can make any hard drive accessible from the web. And it seems the company has struck a nerve.

Pogoplug announced today that its devices and software (which enables access to files on your computer from anywhere) now power more than a million … Continue Reading

Sprint sells 1.8M iPhones, reports smaller loss than expected

If the fourth quarter earnings are any indication, Sprint executives are probably sending a gift basket to Cupertino about now.

In its first quarter of selling the iPhone, Sprint has managed to lose less money than analysts expected it would. It has also added more subscribers than it has in any quarter since 2005 — (Thank you Apple).

The company reported operating income (before depreciation) of $842 million for the fourth quarter on revenues of … Continue Reading

Siri makes up 25% of all Wolfram Alpha searches

Apple’s virtual assistant Siri has found a good match in Wolfram Alpha, the computational search engine from Mathematica creator Stephen Wolfram.

Siri now accounts for 25 percent of all searches made on Wolfram Alpha, the New York Times reports in a profile of Alpha’s upcoming premium service.

The figure shows that there’s a lot for average users to get out of Wolfram Alpha, especially when they don’t even realize they’re using the service. Siri taps … Continue Reading

Flingo raises $7M to bring social TV to every network

One of the largest TV app publishers you’ve never heard of, Flingo, announced today that it has raised an additional $7 million from August Capital, which will help the company bring its Social TV technology to more devices and television networks.

Flingo has developed a technology, dubbed SyncApps, that can detect what you’re watching in just a few seconds and communicate that information to your television, smartphone, or computer. Think of it like a location-based … Continue Reading

Hackers leak Symantec source code after failed $50,000 extortion sting

A group of Indian hackers leaked what appears to be stolen source code from the antivirus company Symantec Monday night, following a month of fruitless negotiations.

Symantec admitted yesterday that it’s been involved with a sting operation by law enforcement centering on a $50,000 extortion attempt from the hackers, who call themselves the Lords of Dharamaja. After those discussions fell through yesterday, the hackers released 1.27 gigabytes of what they claim to be Symantec source … Continue Reading

BlackBerry App World more profitable than Android, says RIM

Showing that it’s not quite dead yet, Research in Motion aimed to “bust a few myths” about its BlackBerry app ecosystem at the company’s Europe BlackBerry DevCon today.

RIM VP of developer relations Alec Saunders pointed out that the company is now seeing over 6 million daily downloads from its App World store, reaching 174 million per month (and over two billion downloads in total). But most importantly, Saunders wanted to dispel the notion that … Continue Reading

After a drop in profits, HTC forecasts cloudy quarter ahead

The next quarter will be tough-going for HTC as it tries to recover from its first big profit drop in two years.

HTC reported revenues of NT$101.42 billion (New Taiwanese dollars) for the fourth quarter, but the company projects revenues of up to 36 percent less in the first quarter, from NT$65 billion to NT$70 billion ($2.20-$2.37 billion U.S.).

HTC previously announced that its profits fell in the fourth quarter, so this news is basically … Continue Reading