Ratings board wants parents to think twice before buying that video game

May 16, 2012 5:47 PM Sarah Mitroff
Sarah Mitroff

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) teamed up with San Francisco Giants players Ryan Vogelsong and Buster Posey (shown above) Wednesday to kick off a public service announcement encouraging parents to check the rating on their child’s video game.

While …

When rumors hit hard: Samsung falls 6 percent after Apple turns to Elpida

May 16, 2012 5:29 PM Meghan Kelly
Meghan Kelly

What a difference a rumor makes. Samsung, which supplies some of Apple’s mobile parts, lost $10 billion off its market cap yesterday after a report surfaced that Apple had taken some of its business elsewhere.

Yesterday, DigiTimes reported that Apple …

Big data is expensive: Palantir raises another $56M

May 16, 2012 3:56 PM Meghan Kelly
Meghan Kelly

Looks like it pays to be in big data. Data analysis company Palantir has raised $56 million in its latest round of funding  through two undisclosed investors, according to an SEC filing today.

Palantir seems to have been very successful …

Netflix web video player gets a gorgeous new design

May 16, 2012 3:26 PM Tom Cheredar
Tom Cheredar

Streaming video service Netflix is rolling out a spanking-new design for its website’s video player today, which may make people think twice about favoring their set-top box over the web browser.

As you can see in the screenshots below, the …

Bitly reportedly raising $20M and launching a viral search engine

May 16, 2012 2:19 PM Sarah Mitroff
Sarah Mitroff

Four-year-old link shortening service Bitly is reportedly working on raising a $20 million funding round and launching a few new products. The startup has apparently also moved out of incubator Betaworks and into its own space, reports The Verge.

If …

Tech materials of the future (and how you can make them yourself)

May 16, 2012 1:13 PM Jolie O'Dell
Jolie O'Dell

Flexible screens, wearable computers, conductive ink, wires that move like muscles: These are the materials that will make up the gadgets of the future, and they’re being dreamed up and developed in do-it-yourself hacker labs and garages all around the …

Verizon to kill off grandfathered unlimited 3G data plans

May 16, 2012 12:48 PM Sean Ludwig
Sean Ludwig

Verizon Wireless will soon get rid of its unlimited data plans held by customers who were grandfathered in before the company launched tiered data pricing, according to a report from FierceWireless.

Verizon CFO Fran Shammo reportedly told an audience at …

Facebook is breaking these three records with its IPO

May 16, 2012 12:17 PM Jolie O'Dell
Jolie O'Dell

Facebook’s IPO is being heralded in rather vague terms as the biggest tech IPO in history. But this initial public offering actually does break a few records, and not just in the tech sector.

This week, Facebook’s IPO will be …

Pirate Bay is under (DDoS) attack! Torrent site remains down after 24 hours

May 16, 2012 11:53 AM Tom Cheredar
Tom Cheredar

The Pirate Bay is currently experiencing a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which has caused the site to remain inaccessible for the last 24 hours, reports TorrentFreak.

Members of The Pirate Bay confirmed the news with an update on their …

Whoops! VeriFone’s Sail user agreement ripped off Square’s

May 16, 2012 10:37 AM Devindra Hardawar
Devindra Hardawar

VeriFone’s Sail mobile-payments platform was clearly a Square wannabe from the beginning — now it seems that’s more true than we initially thought.

VeriFone apparently lifted significant chunks of its user agreement from Square, GigaOm’s Ryan Kim has discovered. While …

A Windows racket: Microsoft will clean crapware off your PC for $99

May 16, 2012 10:10 AM Ricardo Bilton
Ricardo Bilton

The PC crapware problem has finally gotten bad enough that Microsoft is now charging users to fix it.

For $99 Microsoft is now offering to strip consumers’ Windows PCs of all unnecessary software pre-installed by PC makers, AllThingsD reports. Affectionally …

Today, Google web search is getting a new, bigger, better brain

May 16, 2012 10:00 AM Jolie O'Dell
Jolie O'Dell

Editor's Pick

Finally, Google’s search algorithm is getting a huge boost from a source we can actually trust.

No, it’s not your dimwit friends and their Facebook shares. It’s Knowledge Base, a semantically structured body of data 500 million items strong and …

Electric Imp unveils cloud-based home automation: now you can burn your toast from Tokyo

May 16, 2012 10:00 AM John Koetsier
John Koetsier

Home automation is a hot category that just got even hotter. And possibly, just a bit easier. Today Electric Imp is announcing the Imp, a cloud-based approach to monitoring and managing everything you own.

The venture-backed startup in Los Altos, …

Path CEO Dave Morin to join Eventbrite’s board of directors

May 16, 2012 9:02 AM Sean Ludwig
Sean Ludwig

Dave Morin, CEO of social-network Path, has joined ticketing startup Eventbrite‘s board of the directors, a move Eventbrite claims will help it continue innovating on the social front.

While Path had a major privacy blowup early this year, the company …

Microsoft Kinect’s NUads is what the TV industry needs to survive the future

May 16, 2012 9:00 AM Tom Cheredar
Tom Cheredar

What if your ads watched you while you were watching them? Microsoft is set to debut its new motion-sensitive advertising project NUads next month, which the company says will revamp the TV ad industry by doing just that.

The company’s …

iSwifter launches full-featured mobile Facebook app — with social games included — on iPad

May 16, 2012 9:00 AM Dean Takahashi
Dean Takahashi

The problem with Facebook’s mobile app is that it doesn’t run games. The web-based site is built with Adobe Flash, but that runs poorly on mobile devices. As a result, Facebook can display its news feed and photos on its …

TechStars alum Mocavo grabs $4M to help you find your ancestors

May 16, 2012 8:12 AM Sean Ludwig
Sean Ludwig

TechStars 2011 alum Mocavo has raised $4 million in its first round of funding in a bid to help people find their ancestors through its search engine, the company announced today.

Mocavo started getting notice when it become part of …

HTC One X, Evo 4G LTE shipments delayed over Apple patent investigation

May 16, 2012 7:55 AM Ricardo Bilton
Ricardo Bilton

HTC’s One X and and Evo 4G LTE may have been praised for their decidedly un-iPhone-esque designs, but the differences are apparently not enough for U.S. Customs.

The two devices have fallen victim to a surprising U.S. Customs ability to …