Germany's Federal Court of Justice has ruled that ISPs must in future hand over the names and addresses of known pirates and file sharers to rights holders. The ruling is, however, restricted to cases in which a judge has determined conclusively that an IP address is involved in copyright...
Deutsche Telekom thwarted in its attempts to shield customers
We all know that using a phone while driving is dangerous — the National Safety Council estimates there have been over 800,000 crashes in the US involving drivers using cell phones and texting so far this year. As one seller of the products and...
Airtime made quite a splash when it landed a couple of months ago; billed as the next startup from Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, the video chat app had a star-studded launch event that seemed an odd fit for such a simple pitch. If AppData figures are to be believed, however, it hasn't quite managed to hook its audience on the concept of random chat with other Facebook users — just 1,000...
Back in 2009, before video game consoles became the streaming video boxes they are today, it was exciting to have any leanback YouTube experience at all — even a sluggish web app that could only stream pitifully low-res video from within the PS3's aging browser. Three and a half years after that initial tease, though, Google is finally delivering the goods: a native YouTube app for PlayStation 3. It's a free download from the PlayStation Store, and while details are scarce for now, it should support HD video, suggest search results as you type them, access video subscriptions from your account, and let you use a connected smartphone as a remote control. You should be able to find it later today in North America, with other countries to follow. We're grateful, to be sure, but Sony's mystery PS3 video service can't come soon enough.
U...
No more 240p for Sony's PS3
The Dropbox team have given their Android app what they call a tune-up today, releasing a beta version that promises better video playback in Android 4.0 and above, user interface improvements on the Nexus 7 tablet, and the ability to open Dropbox files directly from within other applications. The ever-present and ever-mysterious bug fixes are also present in this update, which has been made...
QR code conveniently provided
Citizens of Northern Europe will be able to get by with fewer frosty trips to the video shop this winter. Netflix is announcing that its streaming movie and TV service is on its way to Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland before the end of 2012, joining the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland, and 47 countries in Latin America. Not all of the Nordics will be getting in on the action, though — it...
Google's advertising strategy took a turn for the sly last week, when the search giant ran an ad for its AdWords service in a print edition of The Globe and Mail, a leading Canadian newspaper.
The ad, embedded below, was recently spotted by Globe and Mail reporter Steve Ladurantaye, who posted it to Twitter along with a caption that read: "An ad for Google ads in today's Globe demonstrates the value of print ads, yes?" Ladurantaye told Mashable that the ad ran last Thursday in both print and digital editions of the Globe, as well as in the National Post, a competing Canadian daily.
The ad...
A year after HP acquired Palm it renamed its new prize the webOS Global Business Unit, and now, a year later, it’s switching things up again. This time, the name of the new identity is Gram, reports webOS Nation, and along with the name change comes a refocusing; from consumer devices to "software, user experience, cloud, engineering, and partnering," presumably employing Open webOS and the web standards-based Enyo application framework, although we learned in May that several core contributors to the latter are on their way to Google.
Whereas the webOS GBU was a business unit within HP, Gram will be its own company; still wholly-owned...
By Vlad Savov
By T.C. Sottek
Uber, the smartphone-dispatched private taxi service, isn't such a hit with local governments: the company narrowly avoided being priced into oblivion in Washington, DC, and this month it's being challenged in Boston. The reason might seem odd: according to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Division of Standards, which held a hearing (PDF), the company's use of GPS-equipped smartphones is the culprit. Despite admitting that GPS positioning is...
"It is our strong belief that the technology and service we offer does not violate existing law and regulations." Uber
As read-it-later services like Instapaper and Pocket move into the mainstream, Amazon wants to make sure that the Kindle doesn't get left behind. It has released a new Chrome browser plug-in that will reformat and send web content directly to Kindle apps and devices. The company had already...
Pinterest launched its first-ever apps for Android and the iPad today, just days after dropping its invite-only policy and opening its doors to the public. Pinterest also announced plans to launch an app for the Kindle Fire, which should be available on the Amazon Appstore "later this week."
The...
Lenovo's made the most of the time since Intel defined the "ultrabook" last fall, releasing a number of different models designed for different users. By and large, the company's done good work, too: we called the ThinkPad U300s the best ultrabook...
Image credit: albertizeme (Flickr)
Think of the most iconic sporting moments of the past couple of decades and then try to find the one thing they all have in common. That's right, it's the camera flashes. Like popcorn kernels hitting just the right temperature, cameras in...
The day is upon us: Facebook is testing the idea of selling sponsored posts directly on users’ mobile and desktop News Feeds, reports Adweek. Currently, users either need to be a fan of a company or organization’s page (or a friend of someone who is) in order for it to get the prime location,...
The surplus technology used to fight insurgents in Afghanistan is coming home, and the Wall Street Journal is reporting that several military surveillance blimps will be given to Homeland Security for testing along the US-Mexico border. The blimps...
It shouldn't come as a surprise to see Nintendo launch a new 3DS revision less than 18 months after the original console — after all, the company waited almost exactly the same length of time before following up the DS with the DS Lite. Where that revision sought to slim down the DS to a...
Microsoft is in the midst of what it says is a major backend overhaul to the infrastructure for the Windows Phone Store (neé Windows Phone...
Apple has spent quite a bit of time describing how unique the visual characteristics of the iPhone and iPad are, but a Samsung expert witness disagrees, stating today that the designs of each of...
Two great phones, two great winners: that's the plan for our latest contest that we're launching in partnership with Qualcomm. Samsung's Galaxy S III for AT&T and HTC's Droid Incredible 4G LTE for...
Curiosity has been reliably beaming back photos from the Martian surface ever since it completed its dramatic landing a week ago, and now we have the best view yet of where the rover sits. P...
It's all anybody asks me. I tell them I'm not using the internet for a year, and they just need to know: "How's it going?"
"It's going great," I say.
"Yeah?" they say, dubiously. Their eyes glaze...
You've waited, you've watched, you've sent angry letters to our homes and offices — and now the day is finally here. Yes, The Verge has been...
One day after Branch launched, Biz Stone and Evan Williams have unveiled the latest project from the Obvious corporation: Medium.com. It's an attempt at creating a new type of online publishing platform, but the ambitions behind the project seem as "grandiose" as they are vague. Medium primarily consists of "collections" of content laid out in a fluid, clean way. Collections can either be...
People aren't just leaving their landlines for the convenience of smartphones; they're leaving them for high-speed cable internet, too. A new report by the Associated Press indicates that the eight largest US telephone companies lost nearly 70,000 broadband customer in Q2 of this year-the first...
