The weekend is here, and so is another episode of CrunchWeek, the TechCrunch TV show where a few of us writers sit down for some real talk about the stories that dominated the tech world over the past seven days.
This week, Ryan Lawler, Greg Kumparak and I talked about Facebook Home’s weird new commercial featuring a screaming goat, our experiences with Google Glass (which was released to developers this week) and the expansion of Google Fiber to Austin, TX and Provo, UT.
TechCrunch
Ken Segall, who worked as a creative director at Apple’s ad agency, TBWA/Chiat/Day, and later as a consultant to Apple until 2008, has given his two cents on Apple’s strange naming system for its iOS devices. Many of us would have to agree that Apple’s naming system for its iPhone devices has been a bit
They were worshipped in ancient Egypt and later, had a stint on Broadway. Now, they’ve taken over the internet. LOLCat: The Exhibishun (Jan. 23 – Feb. 16) is a celebration of feline fascination, bringing together “an array of cool cats and witty kitties” by cat lovers and artists around the world.
The FCC has been more than a little eager to repurpose spectrum as wireless internet access takes off: white spaces and iDEN frequencies have already switched roles, and that’s not including the myriad of spectrum swaps. Add one more wireless variety to the list, as FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has confirmed his agency will vote on a proposal for incentive-based auctions of UHF spectrum. When the Commission meets next on September 28th, it will decide on whether or not to lure broadcasters into giving up the usually TV-focused space for the sake of data lovers everywhere. The freed-up airwaves in the proposal would mostly be unlicensed spectrum with “WiFi-like uses,” but at a much lower frequency than the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands that WiFi needs today: as the first consistent, unlicensed spectrum at that range in the US, it could create opportunities for longer-ranged, free wireless that aren’t even on the table in 2012. Not that we have much of a choice in taking action today. Any accepted rules won’t be completely finalized until mid-2013, and the auction itself won’t take place until 2014. Still, the UHF plans foster dreams of more wireless for everyone — and we suspect that even one Mr. Yankovic wouldn’t mind giving up Channel 62 for a long-distance home network.
Filed under: Wireless, Networking
FCC to vote September 28th on proposal auctioning UHF spectrum, Weird Al might still approve originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 09 Sep 2012 17:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Crave explores the upcoming 3D Print Show, a London-based trade event that puts under one roof work by some of the greatest living contributors to 3D printing.
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CNET News
Rdio has launched in the UK and France with a 7-day free trial of unlimited listening. Rdio hasn’t officially announced this, but it’s working. You can sign up for a free trial and stream.
The cost is £4.99 a month in the UK for web-only streaming, and £9.99 a month for unlimited streaming and mobile access. This is comparable with Spotify’s pricing.
There’s a sign that hangs in the windows of shops in downtown Santa Cruz, California. “Keep Santa Cruz Weird.” It’s not unique to that town, of course — the best known implementation of the slogan is the one seen all over Austin, Texas. Localized versions have also been spotted on t-shirts and bumper stickers in places like Portland and Boulder — any area where the undercurrent of independent thinking does daily battle with the threat of homogenized commerce. The Santa Cruz example sticks in my mind in particular, of course, due to the five years I spent in that town, whose weirdness never fully recovered from the ’89 earthquake, a natural disaster that both wreaked havoc on the landscape and caused a shift in the local zeitgeist, opening crumbled and abandoned storefronts up for Starbucks and Taco Bells — chain stores devoid of the character that makes the town so unique. So weird.
There are, naturally, growing pains with any company — particularly one that has had so meteoric a rise as Google has experienced over the past decade and a half. Evil claims aside for the moment, the transformation from a dorm-based project to an international corporation nearly always risks the loss of the character and principles on which the project was initially founded. After taking the helm as CEO last April, co-founder Larry Page stressed the need for focusing the company’s countless product lines, announcing during an earnings call that, “We’ve [...] done substantial internal work simplifying and streamlining our product lines.”
It’s easy to appreciate the sentiment. As Google grows at a tremendous rate, it risks losing focus, following in the footsteps of companies like Yahoo, which never did all that great a job subscribing to its own “Peanut Butter Manifesto,” by pruning away its ever-growing list of redundancy. Surely no one can fault Google for opting to pump more resources into successful properties like Android — brands with large user bases that require, arguably, even more attention than the company has been able to allot thus far.
Continue reading Keep Google Weird
Keep Google Weird originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Apr 2012 14:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The Cesidian Root is an Internet for the third world — or rather the fourth, fifth and sixth worlds, according to its website. The organization lists current time on its site as Jeuday 5 Columbus 2012 @ 633 (the last three numbers are the time in Cyberterra Mean Time, of course).
What the heck?
Update: We incorrectly reported that an Android version was forthcoming, we’ve edited to correct our mistake — please accept our sincere apologies.
Microsoft Office for iOS gets blurrycam treatment in weird party-room originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
To launch its new Windows Phone Lumia, Nokia chooses to be very slightly un-Nokia. Which is surely a start.
CNET News.com
We might not have chosen the above weird baby chick to pitch our autostereoscopic technology to the world, but at least it makes for some memorable imagery. The hatchling is a 3D image generated by projectors, overlayed on top of a real world object, which can be viewed by multiple people at multiple angles without the need for 3D glasses. Built-in sensors detect the viewer’s positions and adjust the viewing angle accordingly. Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this sort of technology — heck, this isn’t even the first time we’ve seen this sort of thing from Hitachi, but the company says it’s continually getting better, with a marked depth resolution improvement over a technology shown off this time last year at CEATEC. The company is looking to implement the technology for both digital signage and entertainment purposes, eventually revolutionizing the way the world looks at 3D baby chickens.
Hitachi glasses-free 3D technology lets you view weird chicken things from multiple angles originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Sep 2011 22:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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