Bitly, a New York company that lets users shorten, share, and track URLs, is raising around $20 million in a new round of funding, we have learned from multiple sources. That's twice the amount the company raised in its last round, and shows a mature startup closing in on a working business...
The link shortener has always been a Trojan Horse for the real business
Researchers at Tokyo University have achieved 3Gbps transfers over a 542GHz wireless connection, which falls into the 300GHz-3THz band that's classed as terahertz spectrum. This doubles the previous record held by chipmaker Rohm, set back in...
The T-Mobile HTC Sensation 4G is receiving an Android 4.0 update today, right on schedule, bringing an end to a six-month wait for users. Meanwhile, we'd heard previously that an Ice Cream Sandwich update for the HTC Amaze 4G was also on its way in "the coming weeks," and TmoNews has now given us a due date of May 21st. It's a good week to be a T-Mobile customer — today's update news comes...
The BBC unveiled its new online video platform in London yesterday, giving us a first glimpse at how it plans to live stream every event from the Summer Olympics. The new browser-based player will offer pause and rewind options, along with live participant information (such as leaderboards and results) and clickable alerts that can take you to other streams when key moments are happening elsewhere. There'll also be integrated data-driven profiles of the competing athletes that will pull in their Twitter feed alongside public reactions. Anyone that's ever used BBC's iPlayer will know it's not the highest quality stream, and thankfully the broadcaster has taken note; the new player will now stream at up to 3.5Mbps, up from iPlayer's maximum quality of 1.5Mbps.
One-upping NBC's Olympics coverage, the BBC will stream over 2,500 hours of...
Android and iOS apps also on the way
It's no secret that Japan has an aging population, and that means that there's a sizable market of people who either won't learn the ins and outs of today's advanced smartphones or are unable to afford the latest devices. There are options for elderly customers in the country, such as Fujitsu's Raku Raku Phone series, but with the inevitable shift to smartphones means carriers risk leaving some...
Harder, better, slower, cheaper
A new Pantech LTE smartphone has met with FCC approval, and judging by the specs it's on its way to AT&T — but there may be some interesting surprises in store. Along with the expected assortment of legacy radios, the P8010 also supports four separate LTE bands: the 700MHz and 1700MHz bands, which AT&T already uses for LTE, and the 850MHz and 1900MHz bands as well. Of course, AT&T currently...
When we reviewed the Panasonic P–04D last month, some of our major gripes with the device were its lack of Android 4.0, laggy performance, Pentile screen, glossy plastic construction, and the poor placement of the sleep / wake button. Well, today Panasonic and NTT Docomo are announcing a new handset — the Eluga V P–06D — that fixes pretty much every complaint we had.
First off, this isn't the 5-inch Eluga Power, although Docomo will be releasing that phone later this year as well. All of Docomo’s new Android devices are launching with Android 4.0, and the P–06D is no different....
Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang is kicking off the 2012 GPU Technology Conference (GTC) conference right now, and he just announced that Nvidia has developed the world's first GPU for cloud computing, based on Nvidia's Kepler GPU. He's calling it the Nvidia VGX, and described it as "a technology that virtualizes the computing environment such that irrespective of your computing device, we can provide access to the corporate technologies and data that you need." Nvidia envisions deploying the VGX in a data center so that employees can access the power of the virtual machine from any device. It's a pretty scalable solution, as well — a single...
Developer Smule has brought its popular iOS music app Songify to Google Play. Songify is an auto-tune app that turns your spoken words into music, Auto-Tune the News-style, and has seen over nine million downloads on Apple devices. Smule said last December that the company was unlikely to port its apps to Android as most devices that run the OS have a high audio latency that makes them difficult to develop for. Prerna Gupta, co-founder of...
"The critical mass on Android has become very interesting." Prerna Gupta, Smule
The Eluga line is Panasonic's attempt to break into the global mobile marketplace, but if its first tablet under the brand is anything to go by we can't see the worldwide push extending to larger screens. The only distinguishing feature of its Eluga Live tablet, coming out in August through NTT...
You've probably noticed that we're a busy bunch at The Verge: between industry events, trade shows, On The Verge, and our fantastic podcast lineup, we've got you covered virtually every day of the year.
But how are you supposed to keep track of it all? We're happy to introduce The Verge Events, a...
Microsoft originally unveiled its interactive NUads almost a year ago and the company now says it will begin rolling them out in "late spring." NUads take advantage of the Kinect sensor to let viewers interact with adverts or launch them from the...
Today at NTT Docomo’s summer lineup event we finally saw the company take the wraps off a working version of its NERV edition SH–06D Android handset, inspired by (and designed alongside) the upcoming third film in the Rebuild of Evangelion franchise. After using it for a...
Microsoft has greatly improved its Windows 8 multiple monitor support in the Consumer Preview version of the operating system, but the company has fine tuned this even more with the upcoming Release Preview. Mark Yalovsky, a member of Microsoft's User Experience team, has taken to the company's B...
When it comes to streaming games to smartphones, tablets and televisions, OnLive and Gaikai may have some company someday soon. Taiwan-based Ubitus is looking to provide a white-label cloud gaming service to cellular carriers and internet service providers in the US. Like Gaikai, the company's using Nvidia's new GeForce Grid GPU to rapidly capture and stream compressed H.264 video frames over the internet, and...
Today, Microsoft expanded the suite of streaming media services available on the Xbox 360 with the introduction of two new apps — Manga Entertainment and Muzu.TV. Manga Entertainment provides access to full length episodes, movies, and clips of...
Until now, few people would describe Tizen as one of the more visually rich mobile operating systems on the market complete with swirling three dimensional user interface elements. It looked like a mundane early build of Android the last time we saw it, but a video from the recent Tizen Developer...
If you were looking for the face of Android diversity, you won't do much better than the chart above compiled by Open Signal Maps. The company put...
Ashton Kutcher may have been spotted trying on Steve Jobs' signature outfit recently for a film, but Sony Pictures is putting together a major studio adaptation of the Apple co-founder's life and...
Today at a press event in San Francisco, Netgear announced a new next-generation 802.11ac Wi-Fi router, the R6200, and a USB adapter for PCs and notebooks called the A6200. Both will fall alongside...
Flipboard is moving beyond text by adding new audio features that will include audio content from NPR, Public Radio International, The New Yorker, Slate, and SoundCloud. The audio will work in the...
Last night we reported on Voyager Mobile, a new MVNO that planned to offer unlimited voice and texting plans starting at $19 a month. Voyager's website was set to launch earlier this morning, but...
Microsoft unveiled a new look and a plethora of new features for its search engine Bing last week, and we liked a lot of what we saw. If you'd like...
Chinese search giant Baidu has unveiled the first phone to run the latest iteration of its cloud-focused Android fork. It turns out that the device leaked last week is known as the Changhong H5018, a low-end device with a 3.5-inch 320 x 480 screen, a 650MHz processor, and a three-megapixel camera inside a 10.3mm-thick frame. What sets it apart is the new Baidu Cloud OS, which is based on...
Evernote’s 4.0 update for Android is a major revamp of the popular note-taking app, and pretty much everything has been redesigned, from the look, to the app's behavior, to its functionality. Firstly, the home screen has been completely redesigned, with large square icons for New note,...
