I've spent the last week throughly enjoying my new Droid, and while I've come across some problems, most of my issues have simply been with the fact that Android does things differently than the iPhone — the transition just takes some getting used to. But there's one big issue that needs far more than a UI tweak: Android Market. If there was a theme common to nearly every Droid review, it was that Android's app selection just doesn't cut it compared to the iPhone. I think that consensus is o
Last week Apple surprised the iPhone's developer community with the annoucement that it was finally allowing free apps to offer in-app purchases. The move will likely lead to a fundamental shift in the way developers conduct businesss on the App Store (we've already begun to see some changes). I sat down with SGN CEO Shervin Pishevar to talk about the annoucement's effect on SGN's upcoming games, as well as its impact on the market in general.
Pishevar says that he was estactic when he heard
A Facebook developer named Yvo Schapp has uncovered a massive security flaw present on both Facebook and MySpace that would give hackers the ability to steal all of your account data, including your photos, personal messages, and basically everything else you've ever put on the social networks, without you ever realizing it.
Schapp stumbled upon the exploit and contacted both Facebook and MySpace. According to his blog MySpace has since fixed the bug, and while his blog indicates that Facebook
Over the last six months just about all of my tech friends have started using Foursquare, a geolocation-based game that was built by the creators of Google-acquired Dodgeball. Some of them will literally pull out their phones as soon as they enter any restaurant, event or even TechCrunch HQ and check in just so they can be named 'mayor' of that establishment (whoever checks into any particular location the most times becomes mayor of that location). It's fascinating and a bit bizarre to watch
Google has quietly rolled out its own online dictionary, complete with multilingual support and accompanying photos. The new site was first discovered by the LA Times Tech Blog, and you can access it at Google.com/Dictionary.
It works exactly as you'd expect: type in a word, and Google will give you the definition, part of speech, and maybe a similar phrase or two. If you're logged in, you can star a word for future reference.
The new dictionary obviously isn't good news to the many other we
Earlier today we coveredrumors that Apple was in talks to acquire streaming music service Lala. Now New York Times tech reporter Brad Stone has tweeted that it's a done deal. He writes, "Apple has acquired digital music startup Lala. Now updating our story". You can find the NYT story here.
This could be bad news for Lala users. It's unlikely that the innovative deals negotiated by Lala will survive through the acquisition. For over a year, Lala users have been purchasing the rights to st
Here's a new one. As Facebook continues to grapple with the negative press over its privacy overhaul, it's now suggesting a new way to protect your personal information: lie about it. At least, that's what Barry Schnitt, Facebook's Director of Corporate Communications and Public Policy, told the Wall Street Journal in an article this evening. From the story:
Facebook also made public formerly private info such as profile pictures, gender, current city and the friends list. (Mr. Schnitt sug
It's not often that you hear about a startup still in deep stealth that has over 40 employees and backing from some of the biggest names in the valley. But that's exactly the case for Santa Clara-based Kakai, which was founded in May by Chegg founder Osman Rashid. The company has recently closed a $7.5 million Series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Josh Kopelman (First Round) and Ron Conway. Marc Andreessen will be joining Kakai's board. This brings Kakai's total
Last summer, we wrote about the launch of a new service from Google called City Tours that marked the search giant's first foray into the travel space. The service isn't exactly flashy, but it's quite practical: tell it what city you're visiting, and it can generate an optimized travel itinerary featuring a number of landmarks within walking distance. Unfortunately it had a few shortcomings. For one, its directions were all based on distances "as the bird flies". In other words, it was up to
Ev Williams and Biz Stone have just taken the stage at Startup School, where they'll be taking many questions form the audience. You can submit questions by tweeting a question like this "@poll _________" (where the blank is your question). I'll be liveblogging the session.
Q: What was the original motivation behind Twitter?
Biz: We should start with Odeo. We were working at Odeo, we weren't as passionate about the podcasting service as we should have been. We weren't using it, and that wa
Facebook has just launched a new portal at peace.Facebook.com that highlights the site's desire to promote "peace by building technology that helps people better understand each other". The site appears to be part of a larger Peace dot movement that's launching tonight, with the participation of some "impressive organizations" (we're not sure who else besides Facebook is involved quite yet).
Peace.facebook.com is fairly simple at this point, with a handful of graphs and a widget that lets Face
Yesterday I detailed my quest to find the throngs of Droid fans who had woken up at the crack of dawn to grab a place in line before Verizon unleashed the phone to the masses. Yet despite reports of lines elsewhere, I failed — the Verizon store in Palo Alto was a ghost town, as was the Best Buy down the street. Some commenters took my story and similar reports as an indication that the Droid's launch had bombed, doomed to play out the same fate of the numerous supposed 'iPhone killers' befor
