Microsoft is making some big moves. Announcements about Surface hardware and Windows Phone 8 software are causing quite a bit of excitement and speculation. Lucky for us, The Vergecasters are back to set the record straight . On this weeks episode, senior editor, London resident, and Microsoft...
Microsoft is making big moves, and The Vergecasters take notice
In yet another testament to Chrome's graphics processing capabilities, Google has partnered with Château De Versailles to produce Chaos to Perfection, an in-browser interactive tour of the Palace of Versailles. The tour utilizes WebGL to pair...
Apartment hunting may be about to become much harder, as today, Craigslist issued a cease and desist letter to Padmapper, a popular apartment rental aggregator, forcing it to remove all listings derived from its site. The action signals an aggressive new approach toward sites that display housing listings, and could put similar services in danger. By redisplaying listings on a Google Maps...
Struggling camera manufacturer Olympus may soon find relief from Sony, according to a new report from Nikkei. The two firms are said to be negotiating a $623 million investment from Sony Corp., which would make it Olympus' largest shareholder, accounting for more than a 10 percent stake. In April, Olympus reportedly began seeking partnerships with Fujifilm, medical systems maker Terumo, and Sony in an effort to recover from its revenues losses, accounting irregularities, and planned staff reductions of over 2,700 employees. When reached for comment, an Olympus spokesperson said that the company is not prepared to make an announcement.
"This is not something that we have announced," the representative told Reuters. "It has not been decided yet."
The two firms are said to be in the final stages of the discussion and hope to strike a deal...
Relief for the struggling camera maker
It looks like Mozilla has a major announcement up its sleeve regarding Firefox for Android, as a post from the company's official Twitter account promised "something big" would be coming next week.
"Something big is coming" Mozilla
HTC hasn't had much luck lately against Apple on the patent litigation front, and it looks like Cupertino wants to keep it that way. Apple notified the ITC today that it has filed claims in Virginia federal court alleging that HTC has engaged in various anti-competitive practices relating to the assertion of two standards-essential patents against Apple. The filing alleges seven claims of...
Several prominent companies and organizations like Foursquare and Wikipedia have dropped the use of Google Maps in recent months thanks in no small part to the free API call limits that Mountain View started imposing last year. Those limits aren't going away, but Google has simplified the rules and significantly reduced pricing today: what once cost $4 per 1,000 map loads is now down to 50 cents per 1,000 loads, and there will no longer be a different cost structure for using customized map styles versus Google's stock design. Whether the move will help stem the loss of high-profile clients...
Microsoft is lifting the curtain to provide a preview of some of the software and hardware changes for its Windows Phone 8 operating system today. NFC, dual- and quad-core support are all set, and Microsoft has shifted over to the NT kernel for Windows Phone 8 to make it even easier for developers to code for its mobile and desktop ecosystems. There's a new Wallet hub, deeper integration of Skype, and an updated Start Screen interface with support for small tiles. Despite the improvements and hardware support, Microsoft will not release this particular update to existing devices. Instead, the company plans to rollout a Windows Phone 7.8...
The UK's Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is launching an investigation into Facebook's billion dollar purchase of Instagram citing fair competition concerns, The Guardian reports. The OFT is looking into whether Facebook's buyout of Instagram may result in the photo app being restricted from uploading photos to other sites, apps, or services, but must first determine whether or not the deal falls under the office's jurisdiction. Facebook must...
Instagram's founders aren't getting their millions just yet
Though it's been modified for North American release, TERA was born in South Korea, and it shows. All the tell-tale signs of a popular Korean MMO are here: the pretty but generic fantasy setting, the heavy grind to the level cap, the anime sheen over the whole production.
TERA sets itself apart...
Samsung is attempting to convert existing UK iPhone users by offering them a free copy of Easy Phone Sync — an app that will move text messages, contacts, and media out of iTunes and onto a Galaxy phone.The utility uses both desktop and Android apps, which will grab synced iPhone content out of...
Drive may not be the only cloud-based service Google launches this year. According to GigaOm, sources have confirmed previous rumors that Google wants to compete with Amazon in the corporate cloud services market. That means launching virtual...
Announced earlier this week, Nokia's Camera Extras app is now available from the Windows Phone Marketplace for the Lumia 610, 710, 800, and 900 in the US and China (other markets can expect to get it in July). Though it masquerades as an app download, the app itself doesn't...
It looks as though Facebook's stock isn't the only thing that's dropping, as a new report suggests that its userbase is also decreasing, albeit only slightly. According to comScore, as reported by Reuters, the number of unique visitors coming to the social network in the US was 158.01 million in...
The city of Takoma Park, Maryland granted a waiver to its strict Nuclear-Free Zone Act this week in order to use Hewlett-Packard computers in its city library. The city of Takoma Park has been nuclear-free since 1983, meaning that the city is prohibited from supporting companies that work with US nuclear weapons production. HP is on this list of prohibited contractors, so when librarians received the shipment of...
"I used to play games like this with my friends all of the time on the jungle gym at school."
Well maybe not exactly like this. 8-year-old Jason Chan and his friends probably weren't holed up in a giant plastic bucket perched atop a spiral slide,...
Radiolab has consistently been among the most popular podcasts on iTunes for years, yet the WNYC-produced program is only now getting around to releasing its first mobile app. Thankfully the just-launched Radiolab for iOS and Android ($2.99) winds up being much more than a mere companion app for...
A software glitch affecting the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and its subsidiaries, Ulster Bank and NatWest, has left a "large number" of customers...
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are developing a new kind of software that's able to amplify subtle variations between frames of a video so that you can actually see a...
Comcast has been vindicated by an Illinois judge after refusing to give up subscriber information in a copyright case. Judge Gary Feinerman ruled that Comcast was not in contempt of court for...
Facebook ads have just begun showing up alongside game content on Zynga.com, TechCrunch reports. This marks the first instance of Facebook "ads" showing up outside of the social network itself,...
Lenovo’s IdeaPad laptops come in pretty much every shape and size, with svelte ultrabooks sharing brand space with staid productivity machines...
In 1962, the city of New York had just opened the Philharmonic Hall, the first part of Manhattan's Lincoln Center. Mayor Roger F. Wagner, Jr. saw the Hall as the first step towards a glorious future New York, writing a "forecast" of 2012's city in The New York Times Magazine. Although his optimism is sometimes almost unbearable, it's gratifying to see parts of Wagner's predictions come true....
We've all written or posted things on the internet that we've later regretted, whether it's a poorly thought-out comment on the front-page post of a tech website or a potentially scandalous photo from a drunken night out. But law professor Jeffrey Rosen writes that the obsessive editing of one's...
