The Samsung Galaxy Nexus was recently released in the U.K. and since then has been hailed by the tech media as being the best Android phone ever. Since it’s the first Android phone to ship with Android 4.0, which is also known as Ice Cream Sandwich, it didn’t take people long to figure out it came without Flash onboard. READ MORE
Mozilla has just released Firefox 7, which promises a faster browsing experience—especially for the tab-happy crowd. The release comes just over a month after the company released Firefox 6 and is part of Mozilla’s new six-week plan of rapid iteration. READ MORE
Pandora, the online music service, debuted a new HTML5 version of its site Wednesday. The company also announced, to the listening delight of online audiophiles, that it is tossing the advertisements that were supposed to encourage listeners to upgrade to premium subscriptions. READ MORE
When you spend a large chunk of your day, for three straight days, watching enthusiastic tech entrepreneurs distill their products and services into a six-minute quick pitch in front of a rotating cast of industry heavyweights, you start to recognize some basic do’s and don’ts. Here’s are five simple take-aways from TechCrunch Disrupt SF’s Start-up Battlefield: READ MORE
From Monday to Wednesday in San Francisco, TechCrunch’s latest Disrupt Start-up Battlefield competition will showcase entrepreneurs from 30 start-ups vying for a $50,000 prize by making six-minute-long quick pitches to a rotating panel of venture capitalists, tech influencers, angel investors and Silicon Valley players. Monday featured three sessions of Start-up Battlefield, titled Disrupting Traditional Markets, Moving the Web Forward and Entertain Us; here are the start-ups presented in session two, Moving the Web Forward. READ MORE
So you’ve got a PowerPoint presentation or Word doc or .pdf that you’re proud of and would like to show the world. The hands down least cumbersome way to do this is to upload it through a new Web app called Reel. The service seems dedicated to removing absolutely all obstacles: You don’t even need to sign up or enter an email address. READ MORE
Chatter.com exists for the generation of business folks more comfortable with GoogleDocs and Facebook than internal memos. Its works and looks like a cross between the big three social networks, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, and with its latest redesign, hopes to attract more users. READ MORE
Facebook announced its annual big to-do today, sending out invites to developers for its F8 conference on Sept. 22. Each year, techies descend on the conference location, which will be at The Design Center in San Francisco this year, to chat, mingle, and listen to Facebook’s latest plans. READ MORE
Walmart and Amazon have figured out how to bypass Apple’s mandatory 30 percent cut for apps distributed through the iTunes store, reports The San Francisco Chronicle. Walmart has launched an iPad version of its Vudu online video streaming service using a desktop shortcut that lets customers click an “Add to Home Screen” button on Vudu.com to install an app-style icon on the iPad desktop. Likewise, Amazon unveiled the Kindle Cloud Reader which lets customers read Kindle e-books on the iPad even without an Internet connection. Both services use the HTML5 Web browser protocol and follow on the heels of The Financial Times of London which in June launched a Web-based version for smart phones and tablets to avoid Apple’s fee. “The flexibility of HTML5 allows us to build one application that automatically adapts to the platform you’re using – from Chrome to iOS,” said Dorothy Nicholls, director of Amazon’s Kindle division, in a statement. Amazon made its Kindle Cloud Reader compatible with Safari on the iPad as well as Google’s Chrome browser, and plans to add Internet Explorer, Firefox and the BlackBerry PlayBook browsers in coming months. Read more at The San Francisco Chronicle.
With the dawn of HTML5, videos that give the user the option to choose the next step have boomed on video services such as Youtube. Riding the wave of interactive choose-your-own-adventure video applications is Boulder, Colorado start-up Flixmaster. The company, one of the members of the TechStars Boulder incubator, offers a drag-and-drop interface that creates an interactive video without the financial burden. READ MORE
