There could be trouble on the horizon for Google. Consumers in the world's biggest mobile phone market appear to be shunning big-name Android handsets for no-name Androids - with Google stripped out. That's the trend identified by Enders analyst Ben Evans in a must-read blog post here.…
The Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) has established a new centre for its activities in China with the aim of encouraging more local developers and companies to get involved in the global debate to shape the future of the web.…
Oracle is rolling out private infrastructure as a service clouds, with capacity-on-demand (CoD) pricing, based on its various "engineered systems" setups.…
Kim Dotcom's new cloud file locker, mega.co.nz, has all-but-failed to appear online, with its mastermind claiming global enthusiasm for the site has overwhelmed its resources.…
Massively-multiplayer theremins, wireless disco lights and audio-mangling running apps were just a few of the creations that sprung out of Music Hack Day Stockholm.
The event, one in a long-running continuous series of hack days held in locations across the globe, once again yielded an impressive array of imaginative hacks that fuse music with technology.
By: Duncan Geere,
Deloitte is predicting a looming spectrum crunch that will result in higher prices and poor performance, even on LTE networks.…
Filesharing kingpin Kim Dotcom has opened a new websitein the wake of the closure of Megaupload at the start of 2012.
Mega will allow users the ability to upload and store files of any kind, like Dropbox or other cloud storage services.
By: Duncan Geere,
UN talks in Geneva have yielded a global treaty that controls the use of mercury, with the objective of reducing the amount of the toxic metal released into the environment.
Delegates from more than 140 countries agreed limits on the supply of and trade in mercury, and the use of the substance in products and industrial processes. There was particular focus on measures to be taken to reduce mercury emissions from small-scale gold mining, and power plants and metal production facilities.
By: Duncan Geere,
An American college student named Tyler McNaney is developing a machine that recycles plastic household waste into the raw materials for use in 3D printing.
The Filabot performs the 21st century equivalent of alchemy, melting down unwanted material and turning it into plastic filament - the goop that 3D printers melt down and layer out to form objects.
By: Duncan Geere,
Operators are bleeding revenue to over-the-top players, and pinning their hopes on the GSMA-based Joyn standard, but a year after launch platform developer OpenCloud thinks the GSMA might be the problem rather than the solution.…
OKCupid's CrazyBlindDate app aims to cut down on profile building and attract more women -- the idea being "Just meet someone. Meet someone quickly."
Unless you're after casual hookups (and Grindr's success will tell you that plenty of people are) it seems that internet dating involves a resource-intensive profile building exercise followed by messaging, browsing, vetting and coming up with a list of appropriate venues which say "I'd like to get to know you better but in a well-lit public environment".
By: Philippa Warr, Edited by: Ian Steadman
What does Windows 8 cost? I don’t mean in the sense of what’s the fallout of poor Q4 sales for Microsoft and the PC makers, but rather: what do you get for your money?…
You might think talking to an animated cat is a waste of time, but you'd be disagreeing with 120 million people. Cyprus-based startup Outfit7 has built a business -- 19 mobile and tablet apps -- out of exactly that. Its Talking Friends series of apps, in which animals repeat what you say, have been downloaded 500 million times in 26 months. Outfit7 has more than 120 million active users, 30 per cent of whom have downloaded two or more apps. With no outside investment, the firm has set up offices in California, London, Slovenia and Seoul.
"When we founded the company in early 2010, the goal was to make a mobile game for pure entertainment," says Narry Singh, Outfit7's "chief business guru". So they launched Talking Tom, an animated talking cat, which is now one of 18 different versions. The apps allow users to feed the animals, play games and watch videos featuring the characters. The company collects vast amounts of data from users: "Talking Tom was fed 1.7 billion virtual glasses of milk [in 2011] by users," says Singh, 44.
By: Madhumita Venkataramanan, Edited by: David Cornish
The Wikimedia foundation has extended its “mission is to empower a global volunteer community to collect and develop the world's knowledge” by adding a travel site to its portfolio of online services.…
The new mega.co.nz will launch with 50 gigabytes of cloud storage for all comers and a global customer support line, but just 15 to 20 staff to handle calls.…
Earlier this week, Telstra wrapped up its contracts for the duct remediation the carrier committed to under its National Broadband Network agreements. The telco contracted Visionstream to carry out remediation work in Victoria and Tasmania, at a cost of $AU90 million.…
Web giants, telcos, media companies and a host of mobile start-ups will be salivating over today's Gartner forecast that predicts a heady doubling of global mobile advertising spend in the next three years.…
RIM is hoping its reputation for superior security will smooth its path into wallet management as it gains Visa approval for the TSM platform that it is pushing to network operators.…
