As reported on TechCrunch. by MG SIEGLER “This is not a Facebook Phone.” Yeah, whatever. The HTC First is the first phone that has Facebook partnering up with an OEM to bake an Android pie with Facebook Home filling, so I’m calling it the Facebook Phone. There will be more. This is just the first. And guess what? It’s really good. Sitting through the Facebook Home announcement last week, before I got a chance to play…
As reported on Engadget. By Mat Smith We might have spent a few hours toying with Samsung’s new mobile hardware, but tinkerers over at XDA-Developers have had enough time to root the Galaxy S 4, already. This means those (very) early adopters can start perusing the inner workings as soon as it arrives on store shelves. There’s a video of the process after the break and you can pick up all the necessary files (and warnings of not…
As reported on Engadget. By Mat Smith It might not have the trademark, but that hasn’t stopped Apple shaving the cost of its entry-level iPhone 4 and 4S‘ to something closer to its price tag in North America. The 16GB iPhone 4S is now R$1,699 ($840), down from R$1,999, while the 8GB flavor of the iPhone 4 now rings in at R$1,099 ($544), reduced from R$1,499. According to O Globo, if you’re willing to pay upfront in full (and by phone)…
As reported on businessinsider.com by Jay Yarow Nick D’Aloisio Yahoo announced today that it has acquired Summly, a mobile news aggregation app from British entrepenuer Nick D’Aloisio. D’Aloisio is only 17-years-old. When he started Summly, he was only 15. Summly scans the Web for news and uses an algorithm to find the type of content you want to read. Then it summarizes it for you. Yahoo is going to shut down Summly as a stand alone…
As reported on Engadget. By Dana Wollman Until now, people who downloaded non-LTS (long-term support) versions of Ubuntuwere treated to a lengthy support period — a full 18 months. Now, though, Ubuntu’s technical board is shortening that support window to nine months, in the hopes that Canonical can assign its engineers to other projects. (If you look at the board’s meeting notes at the link below, the group also agrees that most bugs get fixed within nine…
As reported on TechCrunch. by SARAH PEREZ Don’t be evil? If that’s the unofficial Google motto, then the company has failed to deliver today. Among the products Google just announced it plans to sunset (read: kill off), beloved feed-reading service Google Reader is now on the chopping block. “*$%#” wrote at least one TechCrunch staffer upon hearing the news. “What will feed my Reeder app,?” asks another. “Super sad,” says a third. “I AM SO MAD ABOUT THIS…
As reported on Engadget. By Joe Pollicino The payphone. Despite how connected our world has gotten in the last decade or so, the majority of the 11,000 payphones in NYC stem from a 1999 contract. Due to expire and renew in October 2014, the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) has been actively figuring out how and what type of modern solution it wants to replace roughly all 11,000 of them with. You’ve heard about…
As reported on TechCrunch. by GREGORY FERENSTEIN Private First Class Bradley Manning has pleaded guilty to leaking classified government documents to WikiLeaks. Reading from a 35-page statement, Manning said he leaked diplomatic cables to “spark a domestic debate as to the role of the military and foreign policy in general,” but denies aiding the enemy. Perhaps most revealing, Manning said that he first attempted to go to media outlets, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, but his…
As reported on TechCrunch. by GREGORY FERENSTEIN America got bamboozled yesterday, courtesy of an unintentional media fabrication: the government is not building a super-fast national Wi-Fi network. A somewhat confusing feature in The Washington Postabout a few loosely connected government initiatives about greater access to faster Wi-Fi got twisted into a story about a plan to create a so-called “Super Wi-Fi” network. What ensued looked like a game of telephone between hair-trigger media outlets. In fairness, I was…
As reported on TechCrunch. by CATHERINE SHU The New York Times has revealed that over the last four months, it was repeatedly attacked by Chinese hackers using methods that have been linked to the Chinese military in the past. The timing of the attacks coincided with reporting for an investigative articlepublished on October 24 that revealed Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, had tried to hide a massive family fortune. Mandiant, a computer security company hired by the New York…