We know Ashton Kutcher looks the part of a young Steve Jobs, but how well can the actor portray the late Apple co-founder on the big screen? The first clip we've seen from jOBS (courtesy of Entertainment Weekly) provides some indication of what moviegoers can expect when the film opens nationwide...
"How does somebody know what they want if they've never even seen it?" Steve Jobs (Ashton Kutcher)
As if it weren't already obvious that professional musicians are rapidly turning to the iOS platform for music creation, digital audio powerhouse Apogee is planning to update its Quartet studio control center to support the platform. It's also...
RIM, which is planning to launch its BlackBerry 10 platform next week, has been reviewing its options for what seems like forever, as CEO Thorsten Heins has mentioned time and again that the company would pursue either licensing its software division or selling its hardware business. Now it seems that all of that talk has drawn some interest from other companies, as Lenovo revealed today that...
In the real world — Planet Earth, reality — there are somewhere between six and ten billion people. Perhaps a billion of them have enough money to own a computer; those people have more money than all the others put together. Of these billion potential computer owners, maybe a quarter of them actually bother to own computers, and a quarter of those have machines that are powerful enough to handle the Street protocol. That makes for about sixty million people who can be on the Street at any given time. Add in another sixty million or so who can't really afford it but go there anyways, and at any given time the Street is occupied by twice the population of New York City.
That's why the place is so overdeveloped. Hold a Book Club Vergecast on the Street and the hundred million richest, hippest, best-connected people on earth will see...
Welcome to the Black Sun
On Thursday morning, Amazon announced its acquisition of Ivona Software, a text-to-speech company. Ivona already powers the "Text-to-Speech," "Voice Guide" and "Explore by Touch" accessibility features of Amazon's Kindle Fire, so bringing those in-house creates some obvious synergies there — but its primary business is Speech Cloud, a software-as-a-service infrastructure that companies use to...
Let's not do this every year
Nokia surprised the 3D printing community last week by unveiling mechanical drawings to allow Lumia 820 owners to print their own case. The company pushed out an impressive Wiki full of details, ten "fascinating facts" about 3D printing, and has been promoting it ever since. However, it's not as easy to print one of these covers as Nokia might lead you to believe.
After downloading the...
Automattic, owner of the ubiquitous WordPress.com blogging platform, announced today that it has purchased Simperium, the company behind the beloved note-syncing Simplenote service for iOS. According to All Things D, Automattic will be acquiring both the talent behind Simplenote and the product itself, so there is no reason to worry that the app might be abandoned. Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic, says that the acquisition will help the company improve its mobile apps, utilizing Simperium's advanced syncing technology that minimizes bandwidth usage. He also claims to be a big fan of...
An 8-inch Samsung Galaxy Note tablet seems a sure thing at this year's Mobile World Congress in February, Ahead of that, DDay.it has posted what it says are pictures of the tablet. If this is really the Note 8.0, it uses the rounded shape of the Note 10.1, but has a portrait orientation and physical buttons along the bottom in the style of Samsung's Galaxy S III or Note II — if anything, it looks like an extraordinarily large phone, though leaks have clearly indicated it's a tablet. An S-Pen slot is apparently at the bottom right corner. DDay.it says it's confirmed a rear camera without flash and a 1200 x 800 screen, backing up previous...
Tumblr today began rolling out new inline forms for posting text, photos, quotes, videos, and more. The new forms are incredibly sparse and modern, relegating all but the most important functionality to drop-down menus or to buttons that only appear when you mouse over an image. "It's a step toward making the Dashboard a smaller and more streamlined experience," a Tumblr spokesperson told The Verge. " With this new way to create a post, the...
Plus, you can now drag and drop photos straight into a post
Hayao Miyazaki, renowned director and co-founder of Japanese animation powerhouse Studio Ghibli, doesn't like video games. He once tried to play a PC version of the Japanese board game Shogi but it wasn't for him. "The PC checks all approaches," he said in an interview. "That's not fair." But...
In an open letter this morning, a group including EFF, Greatfire.org and Reporters Without Borders called out Skype for "persistently unclear and confusing statements about the confidentiality of Skype conversations." The signers cite an increased need for transparency reports as Skype integrates...
Federal prosecutors this week charged three Eastern European men with using the so-called Gozi virus to infiltrate more than one million computers worldwide, including more than 160 at NASA. According to court documents unsealed Wednesday, the...
Ben Curtis is probably best known as the half baked star of the "Dude, you're getting a Dell" from the early 2000s. In Curtis' mind, though, he's the answer to all of Dell's problems.
With the once-proud PC maker currently going through a financial transition, Curtis, now 32,...
Every few years, one of my friends from the early days of digital enthusiasm turns up on the media’s radar as a “defector.” Huzzah! The former advocate or progenitor of the Next New Thing has turned into a flaming critic. Perhaps he or she has even issued a jeremiad against the former Great...
Nokia's now a full year into its Windows Phone transition and it appears that Lumia sales have returned to health. After a challenging Q3, the company has just announced its Q4 2012 financial results today, revealing that 4.4 million Lumia devices were sold in its recent quarter. Nokia previously shipped 2.9 million Lumia devices in its previous quarter, making this a return to the kind of sales we witnessed in Q2...
Nokia investors have something to smile about this morning, as the company's Q4 2012 financial results reveal a return to operating profit for the first time since Q1 2011. As previously announced, the company sold 4.4 million Lumias over the...
IBM has helped to develop a new substance it says will aid in the fight against deadly infections. Superbugs like MRSA cause thousands of deaths per year thanks to their resistance to traditional antibiotics. MRSA, for example, can survive and multiply in "biofilms" — extra-cellular matrixes...
Authorities in the United Kingdom have fined Sony £250,000 ($396,000) for a widespread 2011 PlayStation Network data breach — a breach that the government says "could have been prevented."...
jOBS, the biopic of late Apple founder Steve Jobs, will be arriving in theaters on April 19th, says The Hollywood Reporter. If you don’t want to wait four months to see how Ashton Kutcher fares...
Companies are convening on the Automate 2013 conference in Chicago to discuss robotics, automation, and what it all means for the future of industry. Some reports of late have expressed concern...
British security company Selectamark has launched a new system to help police and military tie suspects to the scene of a crime. The SelectaDNA High Velocity System pistols and rifles fire...
North Korea has announced plans for its third nuclear weapon test. In comments carried by the state-run KCNA and reported by Reuters, the country's...
A group of scientists at the University of Southern California are trying to figure out exactly how beatboxers make that music with their mouths, using real-time magnetic resonance imaging (rtMRI) to track the physics behind the complex vocal performances.
The study, by Michael Proctor, Shirkanth Narayanan, and Krishna Nayak, is particularly focused on how different tones and rhythms can...
The New York Police Department this week unveiled new radiation scanners capable of identifying concealed weapons from a distance. As the New York Daily News reports, the scanners are small enough to be installed in police vans or on notoriously violent street corners, thereby allowing police to...
