Developer Tom Taylor is putting an interesting spin on the live wallpaper concept, turning your humble desktop into a bird's-eye view of your current surroundings. Satellite Eyes uses map data from Bing Maps and OpenStreetMap, but your desktop choices aren't limited to a simple satellite photo;...
The image updates when you change your location
MK Business News is reporting that the successor to the Samsung Galaxy Note will make its debut in October, with the aim of going head to head with Apple's iPhone 5. While there's no confirmation that Apple will follow up last year's launch of the...
The elusive UX31A Zenbook Prime appears to have gone on sale without any official launch fanfare from Asus. Amazon is directly selling the ultrabook right now, with a 1.7GHz Core i5 model selling for $1,149.99 and a 1.7GHz Core i7 model at $1,349.99. Both models have a 13.3-inch 1080p IPS display, 128GB SSD, Intel HD 4000 graphics, 4GB RAM, and a backlit keyboard. If those Intel graphics are a...
Side-stepping recent privacy problems, Facebook has decided to make its user reporting system as transparent as possible. The company posted an article and an infographic last Tuesday explaining exactly how it handles the reports, showing a complex sorting process with four teams dedicated to resolving everything from bullying to threats of violence. With staff in offices in the US, Ireland, and India, Facebook processes reports 24 hours a day, and usually reviews them within 72 hours of receiving a request.
Much like grade-school, users are first encouraged to try and work out their problems by themselves, but if a resolution can't be made Facebook directs the complaints to one of those four teams — a safety team, a hate and harassment team, an abusive content team, and the access team. The safety team takes on drug use, threats of...
A complex solution to a variety of issues
Perhaps more than almost any web startup, Google has walked a fine line between competitive business operations and idealistic techno-utopianism. "Google is not a conventional company," its founders said in a 2004 IPO filing. "We do not intend to become one." Central to this "unconventional" operation was a belief in the integrity of pure algorithms. The now-famous "don't be evil" maxim headed...
"We're shifting our relationship with suppliers from one that is at arm's length to a commercial model." Sameer Samat, Google
Microsoft announced one of its more significant hardware products today, a Surface tablet running on Windows 8 or Windows RT. Although the company did not release pricing or availability information, consumers will be able to pick between an ARM-powered or Intel-based Microsoft Surface with varying specifications. If you followed our live blog, but wanted to see Steve Ballmer's excitement over...
The Washington Post reports that the US and Israel cooperated to create the Flame malware — a computer espionage worm infecting thousands of systems throughout the Middle East — in order to attack Iran's nuclear weapons program. The confirmation, from anonymous Western officials, links Flame to the Stuxnet cyberweapon that the US and Israel used to target Iranian nuclear facilities in 2009. The Post reports that the effort involved the NSA, CIA, and Israeli military, and that it was developed at least five years ago under the classified code-name "Olympic Games."
The connection to the...
A study from the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has found that today's renewable energy technologies could supply up to 80 percent of US electricity by the year 2050. The NREL's study explored various scenarios, concluding that onshore wind power will have the most significant impact while offshore wind power continues to grow. Solar power and biomass were also projected to play an important role, with geothermal and hydropower contributing significantly less due to resource and cost limitations.
Reaching the projected 80 percent would obviously require significant amounts of funding and political...
In response to Linus Torvalds' harsh criticisms of Nvidia's interaction with the Linux community, the company issued a statement to Phoronix today stating that "supporting Linux is important," and that it understands people's frustrations. To address the immediate remarks about its Optimus laptop graphics system — which allows users to toggle between discrete and integrated graphics — Nvidia says that it has made changes in its R295...
"While this may not please everyone, it does allow us to provide the most consistent GPU experience to our customers..." Nvidia
If you've been having a tough time mastering the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, Guitar Zero won't make you any better, but you will look like the greatest axman to ever grace the Xbox 360. Seeking backing from Kickstarter, the Guitar Zero is a custom circuit card for existing guitar controllers...
Despite the fact that Nokia said last year that it would no longer bring any Symbian hardware to the US, the company appears to have done an about-face with the 808 Pureview, a Symbian smartphone with a 41-megapixel camera sensor. We heard last month that Nokia was investigating ways to bring the...
Sprint is citing "overwhelming demand and limited supply" this afternoon as the reasons for a few delays in its Galaxy S III launch strategy, which will see 32GB pre-orders ship next week rather than on the anticipated June 21st launch date that...
A controversial act that makes it easier for US law enforcement to monitor citizens' emails or phone calls without a warrant has just been approved by the House Judiciary Committee. The committee followed the Senate in voting to extend provisions from the FISA Amendments Act...
Looking through a member's tweets on their profile page has always been a bit of a frustrating experience. Anyone who's tried it will be very familiar with it — you end up with a large list of replies with a few original tweets sprinkled in. Twitter is thankfully changing that all today, as it...
A string quartet played a medley of pop radio hits as several hundreds startup founders, Goldman Sachs bankers, and venture capital investors, chatted over drinks inside a gleaming neon temple of Angel Orensanz in lower Manhattan. The mood was upbeat, but shadowed by recent events, calling to mind that famous Charles Dickens line about the best and worst of times.
"I’m going to talk about a pre-Facebook IPO and...
Some like to read Twitter feeds in short bursts, but web service e-Read MyTweets is built on the belief that tweets deserve all the attention of a good book. The system collects your Twitter feed, formats it for Amazon's Kindle, and delivers it to...
Spotify today announced that Spotify Radio, a Pandora-esque recommendations service available in its desktop app, will be available later today through an app update on iOS devices. This marks the first time Spotify has ventured into music discovery on mobile devices, as well as the first time...
Ex-Google employees Maneesh Arora and Amit Sangani may no longer be with the company, but their app MightyText is meant to give Android users a...
Google Offers is now available for iPhone, joining the company's existing Android app and placing the service on equal footing with local deal competitors Groupon and LivingSocial on Apple's iOS...
Microsoft has invited us to a mysterious Windows Phone Summit for June 20th, but is it really that mysterious? With a promised sneak peek at the future of Windows Phone, and alleged leaked...
After finding little success with its line of Optimus Pad Android tablets, LG has apparently decided to quit while it's behind. A company spokesman has today revealed that LG won't be doing much...
Kodak's patent sale is a major part of the company's plan to restructure after filing for bankruptcy early this year, but Apple quickly threw a wrench into that plan by claiming ownership of some...
The BBC has unveiled a new feature for its iPlayer video on demand service that ensures you'll never miss the beginning of a show again. Called...
When RIM trotted out BlackBerry 10 for its official unveil last month we were left with frustratingly little to evaluate. We did get to spend some time with the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device, but it was essentially just a shrunken down PlayBook, and it didn't feature many of the new features that RIM teased us with. Thankfully, today at BlackBerry 10 Jam here in New York we've had the...
On The Verge is back! The show returns Thursday, June 21st, 2012, and as always we are coming at you with our regular assortment of news, segments, and music. This month Josh is interviewing Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, and Tim Wu, author of The Master Switch and the man who coined the...
