As reported on Wired. BY JOSEPH FLAHERTY The “Happy Beaver” is a vinyl toy designed by Jeff Pidgeon – a story artist at Pixar who worked on theToy Story series. The toy started out as a sketch in Jeff Pidgeon’s notebook. Going from 2-D to 3-D can be challenging. Pidgeon started with clay, but eventually modeled the character in 3-D. One of the key benefits of 3-D printing is rapid prototyping. Pidgeon was able to evaluate models…
As reported on The Verge. By Aaron Souppouris On the list of things that bring joy and happiness to all men on earth, Christmas and Emoji feature very high. With that in mind, you can understand our shock to discover that Google is making a mockery of these fine institutions. In a bug report titled Santa Emoji is sad, when Santa should be jolly, one Android user reveals Google’s actions: Please describe the problem in detail.…
As reported on TechCrunch. by JULIEN CODORNIOU Editor’s note: Julien Codorniou is the head of EMEA Game Partnerships at Facebook where he works with the growing social games industry in Europe. Follow Julien on Twitter @codorniou. New social gaming companies are emerging around the world (hot spots right now are Moscow, Tel Aviv and Helsinki), and in my role I get to speak with developers every day. Regardless of the size of the company, their locale, or…
As reported on TechCrunch. by ALEX WILLIAMS Don’t spout off about social in the business world. Just use it to get the work done, because that’s what matters most. I have been reminded of that often during the year. Earlier this month, I wrote about Moxie Software and how it uses the Facebook social graph and a company’s social data to determine the context for chatting with a customer over a branded page. The company uses Facebook and social…
As reported on TechCrunch. by KIM-MAI CUTLER Changemakrs, a platform for sharing inspiration built by an ex-Facebooker, is tapping into the Christmas spirit with a version of the site that lets anyone share holiday quotes. If you sign into the site, Changemakrs will automatically add holiday quotes to the homepage, using some natural-language processing algorithms that categorize the quotes. They also do quality filtering through internal user rankings. This holiday version of the site was hacked together in…
As reported on TechCrunch. by SARAH PEREZ No need to let Facebook and Twitter have all the iOS-integration fun: today, Googleannounced a new, easier way for Gmail users to sync their Google Contacts to their iOS devices. The company is introducing support for an open protocol called CardDAV, which will allow third party clients, including, most notably, the native iOS Contacts app, the ability to sync with Google Contacts. There are already a number of ways to get your Google…
As reported on Engadget. By Sean Buckley Verizon customers saw a flash of excitement this weekend when an alleged hacker claimed to have pilfered personal data for some three million of its wireless customers. Twitter user TibitXimer shared 300,000 names from the file, claiming to have collected them as early as July 12th. According to Verizon, the would-be hacker’s claims are bunk — the leaked data has been available for months, and it’s populated by Verizon FiOS customers.…
As reported on Engadget. By Steve Dent Sure, Google’s not in the Santa Tracking NORAD cabal anymore, but that’s not stopping it from rolling out St. Nicholas-related goodies. It just launched a series of new games, including a chimney / gift dropping challenge, a rocket-powered elf race and a Santa chat that lets you send a droll holiday greeting to your “hoodlum besties.” You can even play Rudolph for a lark and drag Santa around in his…
As reported on TechCrunch. by ALEXIA TSOTSIS You know that annoying kid in junior high that used to give you his lunch money to hang out? That’s what incentivized mobile app downloads are like. Or rather, it’s that kid’s mom or older brother paying you to hang out with them. So when we were blindsided by saw this post by our founder Michael Arrington earlier today, about the TechCrunch iOS app being offered in exchange for a whopping 9 premium plays of Goobers Vs. Boogers*, we…
As reported on Engadget. By Sean Buckley We’ve seen Christmas trees built out of spare car parts, discarded SCSI drives,OLED panels, and quadrocopter stacked boxes, but Germany? Their taking the old tannenbaum back to its roots — and tweaking its genetic code. With the aide of a government grant, scientists in Germany are trying to develop a method of tree cloning suited to Nordmann Fir. The native pine is popular for yuletide trimmings, but can be difficult to grow…