Nintendo seems to have a knack for repeat performances. Nintendo DS? Quickly supplanted by the DS Lite — and the DSi didn’t last too long either before it was succeeded by the DSi XL. Even the 3DS saw a revision, when it was supersized last summer. These redesigns typically don’t change more than the device’s size, but when the 3DS XL was announced, some gamers were left wanting. Didn’t the original 3DS get an accessory specifically to address the lack of a second analog pad? Why didn’t Nintendo take the opportunity to add dual-analog controls? Well, if that happened, Nintendo couldn’t release an encore Circle Pad Pro accessory, could it? Let’s take a look at the 3DS XL Circle Pad Pro and see what’s changed.
Gallery: 3DS XL Circle Pad Pro
Filed under: Peripherals, Nintendo
Google isn’t about search, apps, or devices. Those are just vehicles, and there’s no destination. That’s because Larry Page’s Google is on an unending pursuit of the future, not just next quarter’s earnings. The scattershot of projects Google revealed today at I/O had just one unifying factor: They further that pursuit, or empower the curiosity of others.
Here’s a little noodle-scratcher for you fellow mobile hardware nerds to ponder this evening. This little Motorola Mobility beauty, brandishing the model number XT1058, recently passed through the FCC and left the customary paper trail in its wake. Alright, maybe calling it a beauty is a bit of a stretch, but here’s the kicker: the rudimentary sketch included with the listing looks bears a striking resemblance to a slew of earlier leaked images that purportedly showed off Motorola’s secretive X Phone. Consider the alignment of those three circular elements on the back — those bits match up rather nicely with the camera, LED flash, and Motorola logo/button as seen in images of an unreleased smartphone originally circulated by the team at Tinhte.vn. Even the seemingly curved section along the top edge where the device’s headphone jack lives and the placement of what appears to be the sleep/wake button are spot-on when compared to those leaked photos. Having a hard time visualizing all that? Here’s a side by side view to give you a sense of the similarities: Of course, this doesn’t bring us any closer to figuring out what the device is actually capable of — all the FCC’s listing reveals is that this thing sports radios for Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11ac and NFC. It could be that this is the first regulatory appearance of the so-called XFON, a device that noted gadget leaker @EvLeaks posted photos of earlier this month. After all, the XT1058 has been found to support AT&T’s particular LTE bands, and the XFON’s IMEI label clearly calls it out as an AT&T device. At this point no one (save for the lucky chump who snapped those photos in the first place) can definitively say whether or not the XFON and this curious AT&T device are the same, but it’s distinctly possible. There are a few cosmetic similarities between the two — namely the Motorola logo stamped on the top left corner, the shape of the speaker grille, and the placement of the indicator LED and the front-facing camera. Don’t pay too much attention to the chunky chassis though, as it’s not uncommon for non-final hardware to undergo testing clad in patently ugly shells. You may recall that BlackBerry’s Dev Alpha and Beta devices lived in similarly unflattering boxes before the innards were officially unveiled at a series of simultaneous launch events back in January. For all of
ThredUP, the online children’s clothes consignment shop, is today launching into a new vertical with the debut of a store for women’s secondhand clothing. The move, which puts the service up against competitors like Poshmark and Threadflip, follows its expansion into junior clothing announced at the beginning of the year. The women’s site had previously launched into beta in February, allowing customers to send in their clothes to resell, but had not yet opened its doors to shoppers. At the time, ThredUP said that the decision to launch into beta had to do with the complexities of women’s clothing sizes and other inventory management hurdles, but of course, the store also needed the time to solicit merchandise from customers. As with its efforts in the children’s clothing space, the new women’s store works the same: users request a “clean out” bag, which is shipped for free and can be filled with the unwanted, but good quality, clothing, then returned (postage paid) back to ThredUP. The clothes are checked to see if they meet the company’s standards, photographed, and placed online for sale. Sellers receive somewhere between 10 percent and 40 percent of the resell price, depending on the clothing’s quality. Though now ThredUP is moving into the women’s vertical, its business model makes it different from the peer-to-peer secondhand marketplaces, like Poshmark, Threadflip, Twice, and others, since users aren’t selling their closet contents directly to each other. This makes it less profitable for sellers, but it also eliminates the hassles involved with selling on your own. In the kids’ clothes space, where parents are often quickly overwhelmed with outgrown clothing and are grateful for anyone to take these items off their hands, ThredUP makes a lot of sense. With women’s clothing, it may be more tricky as those who think their gently used clothes are worth selling, as opposed to donating, are generally hoping to make a little money. And for that reason, they might choose to remain on those peer-to-peer sites, where commissions paid are generally only around 20 percent, allowing them to keep the 80 percent. As you can see in the chart below, these companies are already solid competitors for ThredUP: ThredUP has been growing since it refocused its efforts on consigning over clothing swap over a year ago, and now reports 500,000 registered users, 970 percent growth in item sales from February 2012 to March 2013,
Twitter acquired the mini-video-taking app Vine last October before it ever launched, sending everyone into a frenzy about the company getting into the video space. In late January, Twitter finally launched the app to much applause. Since then, it’s gone through temporarily being removed from the featured section due to an issue over adult content, to being used in interesting ways by brands and celebrities. Today, it all paid off, as it hit the top of the charts for free apps in the U.S., according to co-founder and Creative Director Rus Yusupov: https://twitter.com/rus/status/321406005076451328 https://twitter.com/bobby/status/321406757983358977 It’s a pretty impressive feat for any app that’s not a game to hit this spot, and it’s also impressive for Twitter to have another presence on the list, in addition to their own core app. Clearly the push from Twitter helped the cause. The top app on the free store gets quite a bit of downloads after it hits the spot, eventually coming back down to earth after a quick explosion. The charts are based on new downloads and trajectory of its current popularity, therefore Twitter’s own app sits at #35, which just means that a lot of people have already downloaded it. Its closest competition in the social sphere? Snapchat. And even then, there are a few games in between the two. The good news for Vine and Twitter is that the service is iOS-only at the moment, which means there is quite a bit more growth for the app to experience, much like Instagram did when it went over to the Android platform. Nearly half of all Instagram users are Android users. The multi-app approach is working for companies, and all you have to do is look at Facebook’s success with Messenger, Instagram and the quick-hit Poke.
Twitter rolled out sweeping updates to all of its mobile properties this week, mostly to support the new Twitter Cards, but unfortunately, those who are using the service on Android aren’t so happy. The app has always been a bit buggy on the Android platform, but the issues that are being reported are more than just a little problematic. Users have experienced not being able to open the “Me” tab which allows you to access your DMs and switch accounts, important parts of the service. I’ve experienced this bug from the second that the update was released, and I’ve heard that Twitter is working on the issue. It’s not affecting all devices, but this tweet search shows it as being pretty widespread. You’re presented with a blank screen and a small spinner, with no information or message that says that the service is having any problems. At first, I thought that I just had a poor connection, but after using the app with Wi-Fi turned on, it became clear that this was a big ol’ bug: Since Twitter has been streamlining all of its apps, and site, it’s a glaring issue when one of the four tabs don’t work. While no timeframe is being offered, and Twitter hasn’t made an official statement on the issue, it’s safe to say that the beautiful redesign that the Android app received is overshadowed by these issues. If you’re having the same issue, you might have to revert to using the mobile version of the site, as I’ve done. Or, you could search for yourself and get to your profile that way. The nice part about Google Play is that as soon as Twitter updates the app with a new build, it will go live for everyone to grab without any submission process like Apple’s. Hurry up, Twitter, people are cheesed off about not being able to get their DMs from cute girls and stuff. [Photo credit: Flickr]
I keep seeing this topic push up about how data is affecting creativity. Some say we are losing our sense of narration and storytelling. It’s not this at all. We are just experiencing a shift that other civilizations have faced when the traditional means for storytelling transform to give a sense of the changing times facing society. That does not mean a rejection of the narrative form. The ancient Greeks developed a rich oral tradition for telling stories. Out of that they created a common language, which formed the foundation for fables, legends and myths. Now we see that data, shaped by software, creates a space to tell stories in new ways. Narrative methods to express our imagination will change as techniques emerge that allow us to use programming languages to carry on what we know for the next generations. Om Malik says it’s this sense of data storytelling that will become so important. Today, he explains, data is used as a blunt instrument. The ones that use data more effectively well remind of us how we relate to each other. Cloudera Co-Founder and Data Scientist Jeff Hammerbacher said on the Charlie Rose show earlier this month that it’s not that “numerical” imagination” is better than using “narrative” imagination. It’s just that now, for the first time in thousands of years, we need to think more about using data analytic methods for developing stories. For example, Hammerbacher is working as an assistant professor at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, developing a storage and data analysis infrastructure. Like Malik, Hammberbacher said it’s how we find ways to pair data that will give us insights. For instance, finding ways to integrate genetic databases and electronic health records that tell a story that both physicians and patients understand. Hammerbacher recounted a story to Rose about a lump that appeared on his chest. The doctor examined it and sent him to another doctor. Hammebacher asked the question: “Don’t you want to quantify what is in my body?” He followed by saying the amount of insight we get into a server at Facebook is greater than we have about our own bodies. The ones who can quantify our own human data and network it will give society new ways to explain who we are through dimensions we never imagined. Hammerbacher and Malik have views from different spaces across the information spectrum. But they
Hang around in the tech industry long enough and you or someone you know will be heard saying, “that’s so crazy it just might work.” Two years ago, if you’d told me that an open-source, P2P currency would soon be a thriving, billion-dollar market, I would’ve told you that you were on a lonely bus headed to CrazyTown, U.S.A. But today, 
Line, an app made by South Korea’s Naver Corp which has grown rapidly since its launch in summer 2011, is typically labelled as a messaging app – and compared to the likes of WhatsApp, Viber and Skype. But in reality Line’s feature-set positions it closer to being a social network. In other words, Line is going after disenchanted Facebookers as much as it’s hoping to woo Skype calling addicts.
Since launch just a few weeks ago, email management app Mailbox has been a pretty big hit — so big that more than 1.25 million people have signed up for the waiting list. The downside to that early success is that new users are added to a waiting list as Mailbox tries to keep up with demand. The company has processed about 500,000 applications so far, and is processing 50 million messages a day.
Microsoft’s 128GB Surface Pro has sold out in the online Microsoft Store in the U.S., just a few hours after going on sale today, February 9. The 64GB version is still available as of this writing, and the Surface Pro is still likely in stock at physical retail locations like Best Buy, where it also went on sale today, although checking the stock levels via their online tool reports the Surface Pro as “Unavailable” across the board.
It’s the Crunchies’ after party and GitHub Co-Founder and CEO Tom Preston-Werner is sitting at a table by the front door at Absinthe in San Francisco with the Crunchies statue he had just accepted for best overall startup.
According to Twitter, it was hacked and 250K accounts were affected, so they received emails from the company to change their password. This is not the first time this has happened, but this time it was a real hack, rather than a blend of real hacks and “false alarm” blast of emails like last time. Way to start off our weekends, Twitter. Who knows if you’ll even get the email from Twitter about it, I know that I filter all of those things out. You can read all of the details about the hack and the company response here. I find it really confusing when anything like this happens, because it feels like companies try to diminish the perception of the impact of the situation. Fact of the matter is, its users are seeing sad tweets from their friends about how they got hacked. I even had one person tell me that they felt like they weren’t cool enough because they didn’t get hacked. Instead, or in addition to, just go change your password. We’re all cool enough to get hacked. The number, 250K affected, seems a bit too tidy to me, and I’m not saying that Twitter is lying, I’m just saying that it’s better to be safe than sorry. Twitter also suggests this course of action, which is way too much for most people’s brains to process on a Friday: We also echo the advisory from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and security experts to encourage users to disable Java on their computers in their browsers. Sure, OK. Happy Tweeting (Maybe)! While you’re at it, change all of your passwords for everything. It’s a good thing to do once in a while, especially if you use the same one for every single site you log into. [Photo credit: Flickr]
Google continues its push to bring its web-centric 
Only a few years in, and already the mobile application ecosystem has become an unfathomable jungle of applications – some 700,000-plus in the two top mobile app stores, Apple’s App Store and Google Play. And yet, we’re still waiting for the Google of the mobile app era to come in and save us from the mess that is today’s app market. A search engine that uses not just dozens of signals, but thousands, to help the everyday user connect with the apps they are searching for.
Don’t spout off about social in the business world. Just use it to get the work done, because that’s what matters most.
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