Handset microphones are designed for recording voice audio, so when you're trying to bootleg your favorite band at a concert, distortion becomes a problem. To remedy this, the folks at Open Music Labs have created a specialized microphone called the bootlegMIC that seriously ups the quality of...
Keep your bootlegMIC close and your lawyer closer
Joel Tenenbaum, a former student at Boston University who was ordered to pay $675,000 for sharing 30 songs over Kazaa, will not have his case examined by the Supreme Court. Tenenbaum had asked the Court to consider reducing his damages, but the...
When Eric Demers left his job as CTO and VP of AMD's graphics division, rumors immediately popped up suggesting that he would be moving to Qualcomm. And while the company has yet to make an official announcement on the hiring, it appears as though Demers has already confirmed his new gig — via a Facebook post. On Friday tech analyst Pat Moorhead wrote a message congratulating Demers on being...
Mercedes' Actros long-haul truck now comes outfitted with a system that already knows what's on the road ahead in order to save fuel. Called Predictive Power Control, the system uses GPS data to determine the topography of the road, and then "intervenes" when necessary to control speed, braking, and shift gears in order to drive as efficiently as possible. Mercedes claims that this reduces the amount of fuel consumed by three percent. It's based on a similar set-up called Predictive Cruise Control, which debuted in 2009 and worked similarly but could only control speed and braking. If you're driving a new Actros there will be no changes to how you actually operate the vehicle, though the company says that to get similar results without Predictive Power Control would require "an extremely motivated truck driver with an exceptional level...
"Performance that could only be matched by an extremely motivated truck driver with an exceptional level of concentration." Mercedes
"Killer gaming performance, poor battery life." Frogger40
TiVo showed off a transcoder box that let users stream recorded shows to their iPad back at CES, but now the box is no longer a prototype. At the 2012 Cable Show in Boston, the company officially took the wraps off TiVo Stream, a small device that serves as a bridge between your TiVo and your iPad. Assuming both your TiVo and iPad (or iPhone) are on the same network, the TiVo Stream lets iPad...
Microsoft appears to be expanding its built-in Windows 8 apps for the upcoming Release Preview. Due in the first week of June, Windows 8 Release Preview will include News, Sports, and Travel Metro style apps according to winunleaked. The site has been posting screenshots and information about the Release Preview build over the last few days, revealing that the final code is completed internally at Microsoft as build 8400.winmain_win8rc.120518-1423.
The inclusion of additional Microsoft-built Metro style apps follows some updates that the company has been pushing internally recently. Mail,...
The on-again, off-again launch of SpaceX's unmanned Dragon capsule is on target for yet another attempt tomorrow (Tuesday) at 3:44AM ET. This comes after Saturday's liftoff was aborted at the last possible second — quite literally — when a faulty check valve led to high chamber pressure in the engine of the Falcon rocket that Dragon is hitching a ride on. The hardware in question has now been replaced, and SpaceX claims that extensive tests have revealed no further problems. In another positive sign, forecasters are predicting an 80 percent chance of clear skies for the launch. if something should manage to prevent Dragon's trip yet...
Chris Dodd, the former US Senator and current head of the MPAA, is all too aware of how his agency is perceived by outsiders. In a recent interview with Variety magazine, Dodd said that his agency needed to take a more "subtle and consumer-oriented" approach to future anti-piracy legislation in order to avoid the backlash seen with the Stop Online Piracy Act and its counterpart PIPA. "Google chose wisely by making Hollywood the enemy" in SOPA,...
"Google chose wisely by making Hollywood the enemy." Chris Dodd
If you're a Facebook user as well as a fan of staying on top of the ever-churning news cycle, you're going to love this. As you know, The Verge is able to track long, complicated news stories over time thanks to our StoryStream technology (part of the ingenious Chorus platform which powers all of...
Starting today, Vodafone will offer a pay-as-you-go service called Bemilo that allows granular control of a child's mobile phone using a special SIM card that can be used in any phone or tablet. Parents can use a web interface to control and schedule phone functionality, including the ability to...
We've seen Gmail go through many changes over the years — some big (like the complete redesign from last year) and some small (like auto-translation) — but recently Google's been trying to improve search in the webmail service. The company...
It's no secret that we're fans of video game streams around these parts (Paul Miller says he'll miss Twitch.tv most of all while he's offline this year), and if you're looking for a way to share your own gaming exploits, Elgato hopes you'll check out its just-announced Game...
A major focus of the 2012 Cable Show in Boston is on user interface and user experience — it seems cable companies are rapidly realizing that the traditional cable box UI is pretty painful to use. Comcast just introduced a major revamp for its UI, and Motorola just announced its HTML5-based...
As game consoles age, developers are able to squeeze increasingly impressive experiences out of the hardware as they learn how to utilize it better — just look at an early Xbox 360 game compared to an upcoming title like Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. While speaking to VentureBeat, Microsoft's Kudo Tsunoda explained that he believes that the trajectory of the Kinect motion control system will be similar. "People...
Facebook's massive initial public offering, the largest of any tech company to date, has caused no shortage of problems for both it and the NASDAQ stock exchange. After opening on Friday at $38, Facebook's stock is now down to $33.73. While there...
The Product Red campaign, which raises money to treat and prevent HIV, AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria announced today that they plan to host a global PS3 and Xbox 360 video game tournament.
Not much is known about the (RED)RUSH video game tournament, which according to the site runs from June 1...
Comcast kicked off this week's Cable Show in Boston by showing off two new platforms with slick UIs for video and other services, launching first...
Sony has just released its Music Unlimited streaming app for iPhone, opening up the service to many more users who don't have Sony devices. Music Unlimited is similar to Spotify or Rdio in that it...
Apple has reached out to its neighbors in Cupertino, CA with a mass mailing that details the company's ambitious plans for its upcoming "spaceship" campus. The letter, signed by CFO Peter...
As expected, Sprint is now selling HTC's Car StereoClip, the miniature wireless adapter that plugs into any 3.5mm jack and lets users stream music from Bluetooth-enabled handsets. Integrated...
Now that Chinese regulators have approved Google's acquisition of Motorola, the deal should be closing very soon, though it looks like it might also include a significant number of layoffs. T...
Microsoft is improving the functionality of its Kinect for Windows hardware this week with the release of a 1.5 version of its Software Development...
Every set-top box maker, TV manufacturer, and cable company has a vision for "the future of television," and now Motorola is expanding the push for its own version. DreamGallery, which will launch in North America later this year, is an HTML5-based platform that lets cable providers make near-instant changes to their user interfaces. It's meant to work on anything from televisions to...
When Motorola updated its Ice Cream Sandwich timeline, some users were upset that the Droid 3 and X2 would forever remain on Android 2.3. In response, Motorola has detailed its process for deciding whether or not a given phone or tablet will be getting an upgrade. "We work very closely with...
