China :: Technology

At Launch 2011, I spoke with Gobbler CEO Chris Kantrowitz. Gobbler is a service for those working with pro audiothe service helps its users back up and organize audio projects, and allows users to send large projects to others easily.

At Launch 2011 I spoke with the founder of SyncPad, a new application for collaborating in real-time. Using this app, users can share visual presentations remotely or locally through drawings, images, and PDFs. As the founder of SyncPad explained, the app supports HTML 5 and can also be accessed through a web browser in addition to the SyncPad iPad and iPhone apps.

Im here at DEMO 2011- the conference where startups launch new products and latest technologies on stage. Demo is certainly well produced and feels a little more grown-up than other startup competitions that can be a little rough around the edges. I dont have my lovely camera crew with me this time, so im reporting via my iPhone.

If you'd like to give your iPad the same cosseting your posterior receives when you slot into the sport buckets in your Continental GT then you, good chap, are in luck. Bentley's "luxury leather partner" Ettinger, which ensures no surface of the vehicles is bereft of animal hide, is releasing a line of gadget cases to cover your iPad , iPhone , or BlackBerry -- though it's unclear exactly which model for the latter. Prices? You're looking at 45 for either of the phone holsters or 89 for the iPad-sized model. That's about $73 and $145, respectively, and a lot of cash for a little hide. If you're still not dissuaded there's another image of the tablet-sized version and a press release below. Those, at least, are free. Continue reading Bentley Collection iPad, iPhone, and BlackBerry cases are made of rich, non-Corinthian leather Bentley Collection iPad, iPhone, and BlackBerry cases are made of rich, non-Corinthian leather originally appeared on Enga...

At Launch 2011 I caught up with well-known Silicon Valley VC Dave McClure , I gave him a chance to answer the question I asked him and also on why he thinks design can be more important than technology.

The CEO of Vodafone Germany did not mince his words on Monday at CEBIT 2011 when he came out strongly in favor of the massive deal between Nokia and Microsoft. Why is that? Because, as he says in the interview below, having a fourth major option is a good thing for carriers. He notes that Apple is big, Android is growing, and RIM still rules the enterprise. In his eyes there is more than enough space in the market for what Nokia and Microsoft are working on. Surprised? We were. Vodafone Germany is the largest carrier in its country, and so if it decides to push WP7, it could be a huge boon to the new mobile platform. Watch the comments from the man himself below: Top Image Credit , Via WMPowerUser

Entrepreneur Marco Vanossi is heavily involved in the Sao Paulo Internet and technology scene which as youll find out is largely centered around a meetup in Sao Paulo. Here we talk about the investment climate in Brazil and why everyone is moving from Googles Orkut to Facebook.

Jim Louderback is the CEO of Internet Television Company Revision3 . He has had numerous jobs in media companies involved in technology, most notably with TechTV and editor-in-chief of PC Magazine. He is also well known as the television host of TechTVs Fresh Gear for three years from 1998 to 2000. I talk to him about the future of online video and get an office and studio tour of Revision3. Here

There have been rumors that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has decided to make an offer of $150 billion to buy out Facebook in an effort to lessen the political impact caused by the social network. As you may well expect, the rumors report are false. Apparently, mainstream media in Egypt is reporting the story as real news according to a tweet by Wael Ghonim, the Google exec who became known due to his abduction and release in Egypt. First of all, Dawn Wires, the source of the rumors notes at the end of the piece that Sunday Humor articles at Dawnwires.com are meant to humor [their] readers. They may or may not be the truth. A lot of readers seem to have have missed this bit as the comments section of the article include remarks like not sell freedom and lot of bashing of the Saudi King. Secondly, Arabic news portal El-wasat confirms that it is complete bogus and denies allegations of the Goldman report presented to King Abdullah of how using Facebook could be used to cement his ...

The Motorola XOOM is looked upon by many as the only challenger to Apples dominance in the tablet market. Its the first dual-core Android Honeycomb powered tablet to market that has already received the root treatment but today has been subjected to a few kernel tweeks, overclocking it to run 50% faster than its default setup. News of the impressive feat comes via the ever-talented members of the XDA-Developers forums, where one of its members coolbho3000 posted that he had managed to overclock the XOOMs Tegra 2 processor to such an extent, it will more powerful than Nvidias recently announced Tegra 2 3D processor. Instructions are posted on the forum detailing how to overclock the XOOM, requiring a flashed bootloader and root priviledges. As always, we dont recommend you try modifying your device as it will invalidate your warranty and could brick your device.

Living on the land of the rising sun? Well, were jealous because the Nintendo 3DS went on sale there this morning and Nintendo is said to have swiftly moved their initial 400,000 unit stockpile pretty swiftly (including pre-orders). Lines were said to be as long as 2,000 people deep for the 25,000 portable gaming system,but you cant put a price on 3D, can you? Nintendos 3DS launches in the US on March 27th for $349 and is backward-compatible with previous Nintendo DS games including DSi games.

If my school band had been a little more like this one. I may have got more a little more female attention back then. Reddit

If this super slim monitor looks familiar, it's for a good reason -- AOC's new Aire Black LED monitors are nearly identical to their white counterparts , save a couple exceptions. As the name suggests, the new monitors are an all black affair, and come in 20-, 22-, and 23-inch iterations. The slender screens also come equipped with a new software feature called Screen+ that allows users to divide the display into four separate work spaces. Other than that, not much is new here -- like the rest of the Aire series, the Aire Black features a 12.7-millimeter-thick screen, with a 16:9 aspect ratio, 50,000,000:1 dynamic contrast, DVI-HDPC input, and five millisecond response time. If you like your monitors skinny, you can get your hands on the ebony displays now for $129 (20 inch), $149 (22 inch), or $179 (23 inch). Full PR after the jump. Continue reading AOC Aire Black LED-backlit monitors, more of the same, now in black AOC Aire Black LED-backlit monitors, more of the same, now i...

This video was bought to you by SitePen and Viadeo . Part of last summers YCombinators batch, Crowdbooster is a Twitter analytics tool that measures how well you are performing on Twitter and gives you insights to make your Tweeting habits more effective. In an increasingly crowded market of Twitter analytics tool, what makes Crowdbooster special is that as well as giving you analytics, it also gives you suggestions on how toimprovethe effectiveness of your Tweets, such as when is the best time for you to Tweet from each account. I sat down with co-founder Ricky Yean to talk about Crowdboosters latest developments including a preview of their new reports feature. Coming soon and currently in private beta it will enable you to schedule full analytic reports about various Twitter accounts enabling you to see clearly andefficientlywhich Tweets are preforming best. When signing up, make sure you mention you heard about Crowdbooster from @TheNextWeb and theyll let you in ASAP.

This video was bought to you by SitePen and Viadeo . Millions of dollars have beenraisedfor projects ranging from filmsto world recordson crowd funding platforms such as Indiegogo and Kickstarter. We wanted to discuss thisphenomenon, soduring Social Media Week, here in San Francisco we hosted a panel on how to use social media to crowd fund an idea. You can read Read, Write Webs great write-up on the panel here, but here is the video of the sessionrecordedin full.

Developers creating apps for Microsofts Windows Phone 7 platform are now able to submit more free apps to the marketplace after the Redmond-based company announced it had lifted the limit from five free apps to one hundred. Microsoft has initially placed the restriction on developer submissions to ensure the Windows Phone 7 marketplace wasnt littered with lightweight, low-quality applications that served as Lite versions of its more feature-rich paid counterpart. The limit was increased after developers submitted feedback on the matter, pressuring Microsoft to relax its rules, mainly because free and ad-supported versions of apps were beginning to outperform their paid counterparts. With the Nokia partnership taking shape, Microsoft is going to need to do everything it can to tempt developers from Symbian to Windows Phone 7, this is definitely a good start.

Funny because its true. Sticky Comics , Dan Monzelowsky

Premium WordPress theme designers WooThemes has released Tumblr2WP , a new tool to help users port their content from the increasingly unreliable Tumblr platform, importing it into a self-hosted WordPress blog. Tumblr has experienced huge growth over the past year, but it has also been plagued with scaling issues . Its increasing downtime frequency even led to the Tumblr team creating its own version of Twitters Fail Whale; the Tumbeasts. The premium WordPress theme company waited for the release of WordPress 3.1 to release its tool because the new self-hosted blogging software supports post formats, which were not present in prior releases. The tool will create a WXR (WordPress eXtended RSS) file from your tumblr site which can be imported into WordPress. Creating 8 tumblog themes for WordPress, WooThemes is hoping that existing Tumblr users will want to have more control over their content and its uptime, releasing a free WooTumblog plugin that replicates the Tumblr publishing inter...

Google and Facebook are not encrypting the mobile traffic sent to and from their services, inviting wannabe attackers to impersonate them or post bogus status updates as a result. Dan Wallach, a university professor at Rice University in Houston, Texas set up a smartphone security experiment as part of his undergraduate security class to sniff traffic on a network whilst he performedseveral web requests from his Android handset, detailing his findings in a blog post . The results from the experiment were telling, noting security lapses on both Googles and Facebooks part. Google was found to properly encrypt mobile traffic to its Gmail and Google Voice services but not on its Calendar service, highlighting a small security risk that wouldnt necessarily expose sensitive information but grant an attacker access to calendar transactions, possibly allowing them to impersonate the mobile user. Worryingly, Facebook was found to be dismissing secure connections altogether, even if a user had s...

Blog 9to5Mac has procured some interesting information in regards to what Apple is cooking up behinds its closed web store . The blog is reporting that all 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro models will have an Intel i7, quad-core processor clocked from 2.0GHz up. The laptops will also switch from NVIDIA graphics cards to AMD silicon. The base-line 15-inch MBP will have AMD Radeon HD 6490M with 256MB of RAM, while upper tier 15 and 17-inch models will sport a AMD Radeon HD 6750M chip with 1GB of dedicated RAM. The 15-inch model will be available with a 1920 x 1200, 1080p display and this display resolution will be standard on the 17-inch model. The SKUs and additional specs are waiting for you after the break. Anyone biting? MC700LL/A MBP 13.3/2.3/2X2GB/320/SD-USA MC724LL/A MBP 13.3/2.7/2X2GB/500/SD-USA MC721LL/A MBP 15.4/2.0/2X2GB/500/SD/GLSY-USA MC723LL/A -MBP 15.4/2.2/2X2GB/750/SD/GLSY-USA 15 1080P1920 x1200 4GB 1333MHz RAM 750GB hard drive 2.2Ghz Dual Core i7 SDXC AMD 6750 GPU w/1...

Weve followed Twitters plans to expand its staff into Europe for some time. Back inNovemberthe company told us that it planned to have A small number of people on the ground in 2011. Now its starting to make those hires. As TechCrunch Europe reports today, Twitter is hiring in the UK. However, the companys starting small, with just Account Executives and Account Managers. These are both sales roles that appear aimed at improving Twitters links with British brands and the European advertising industry, which is centred around London. Account Executives must be Enthusiastic Twitter user(s) with relevant sales experience, a strong track record, and solid customer relationships, while Account Managers need Proactive attitudes, strong backgrounds in user support and account management, excellent communication, and of course, an unflagging enthusiasm for Twitter. While the job descriptions say that the staff will be working out of a new London office for the company, this isnt necessaril...

Motorolas much-awaited XOOM tablet has today gone on sale in the U.S with mobile operator Verizon Wireless offering the Honeycomb-powered device for $599, requiring a two year contract and additional data plan. Thesubsidised plans start at$20 for 1GBrangingup to $80 for 10GB, with an unsubsidized version priced at $799.99 The Motorola XOOM first debuted at Januarys CES event and was showcased as the first Google Honeycomb Android tablet. Powered by a 1GHz dual-core processor and featuring a 10.1-inch screen with a 1280 x 800 resolution, the XOOM packs in a 5MP rear-facing camera which supports HD video recording and a 2MP front-facing camera for video calls. It will also include a built-in gyroscope, barometer, e-compass, accelerometer and adaptive lighting. With increased functionality, you would expect the Xoom to be battery intensive, but it is said to support up to 10 hours of video playback and charges in half the time compared to other tablets on the market. The XOOM will not be...

UK-based genealogy website MyHeritage has further staked its claims as the most popular family network on the web after announcing it has surpassed 3 million registered users in the UK, meaning that now one in twenty people in the UK now use the service. MyHeritage boasts nearly 3.2 million users and registrations have risen steadily since its launch in November 2005, demonstrating increased demand for family research and tracing family trees. Judging by MyHeritage users alone, there is now more interest in family history in the UK than any other European country. Our phenomenal growth in the UK and around the world indicates that family history is transforming into a popular mainstream activity, said Laurence Harris, UK Genealogy Manager at MyHeritage.com and a researcher for the BBCs WDYTYA (Who Do You Think You Are?) programme. By enabling people to explore and share their family histories on the web for free, MyHeritage.com is helping drive this trend. Were delighted to provide th...

Helsinki-based smartphone gaming company Grey Area has secured $2.5 million in Series A round of of funding from notable games industry investors including Index Ventures, London Venture Partners and Initial Capital. Grey Area is best known for its popular location based MMORPG game Shadow Cities , which enables players to battle for control of theirneighbourhoods, collect energy and become the strongest mage in their city. The game knocked Angry Birds off the top of the charts in Finland, launching as a free game that allowed players to purchase in-app items.The game will be making its way to other cities in the very near future. The iPhone has already emerged as an immensely popular gaming platform, commented Ville Vesterinen, CEO of Grey Area. However, we feel there is an entirely new category of games that can be built for todays smartphones. Our goal with Shadow Cities was to make the creative and technical leaps needed to make this a reality. Grey Area, currently headquartered i...

JP Morgan Chase & Co has raised $1.22 billion for a new fund to invest in the social media sector. The filing for the aptly named Digital Growth Fund details that the fund will offer pooled investment fund interests. Theres no specific mention of Social Media but the NY Times reports The Digital Growth fund is indeed the social media fund. The launch of the social media fund follows Januarys $1.5 billion fundraising by Facebook , mainly from Goldman Sachs Group Inc and its international investors. Expect significant investments to enter the social space soon. Bubble? What bubble? Image Credit

TNW Quick Hit A!arm ($.99) is an iPhone and iPod Touch alarm clock one can turn off with the sound of ones voice. Hits: Easy-to-use app, with a minimal, yet pleasing, interface. A!arm also adds social features, an awake confirmation feature and the Sheep Count Game for those unable to sleep. Misses: If one uses another app to aid them with sleep, for instance a sleep machine app, it is a little difficult to shout over the app to get A!arm to stop. Adding a noise-based sleep aid which shuts off when the alarm goes off would be a super addition. Overall: 4.5/5 The Details: I have trouble sleeping and consequently have trouble waking up on-time and without feeling like Ive been on a 3 day bender. A!arm, from Michael Diguet and Martijn Verpaalen, is an iPhone and iPod Touch app which aims to help you sleep, wake at a desired time, ensure youre awake when the alarm goes off, and if you so choose, sleep a bit longer with a voice-controlled snooze/stop feature. The entire process begins by ...

Want to experience the Toyko Marathon 2011? Joseph Tame aka @tamegoeswild aims to bring the marathon to you through his new invention code named iRun. Tames project will stream the marathon from the multiple devices strapped to the iRun, and will broadcast the event on Sunday Feb 26th (6pm EST) from his site . Tame calls iRun a social media studio. It sports four iPhones, an iPad, an iPod, an Android, rotatable mounts, 3 wifi units and a bird-feeding dish. This highly complex device also has various rods and piping that secures the unit from falling apart. Seriously though, this thing looks like a catastrophe waiting happen. iRun is equipped with Twitter, Runkeeper, FaceTime and Skype, and uses a mini-weather station to stream information about the temperature, CO2, noise and humidity levels. Hes asking people to activley participate on Twitter. Tame explains how hes pulling it off: This technology will allow me to broadcast live video on two cameras (using either skype or FaceTime ...

In a note to investors on Wednesday, RBC Capital Markets Managing Director Mike Abramsky reiterated the firms confidence in Apples upcoming next-generation iPad. RBC predicts that Apple will sell 30 million iPad 2 units between April 2011 and March 2012. Apple will unveil the iPad 2 at a media event next week, and the tablet is expected to launch in late March or early April. Abramsky discusses expected hardware specifications for the iPad 2 in his note, which include a faster 1.2GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, a rear camera, a front-facing camera for FaceTime video chat and a thinner, lighter case. He also notes that initial supply may be constrained due to component availability, however,which jibes with our earlier report .

New intel gather by enthusiast blog Droid-Life sheds some light on the steps Motorola XOOM owners are going to have to take to make their tablets LTE compatible. Approximately 90 days after launch, customers can send their XOOM units back to Motorola, free of charge, for the promised LTE upgrade. The whole process,accordingto a Talking Points data sheet, should take six business days. The memo also notes that users do not have to change their [data] plan when transitioning to 4G LTE. Hit the jump to have a look at the document for yourself and let us know what you think. Read

Instagram is without a doubt one of my favorite iPhone photo apps, incorporating fun filters and social sharing. And Im hardly alone, as just before Christmas, the wildly popular service hit 1 million users. While we patiently wait for a web interface, some of us havent been so patient In January, South African based developer Herman Schutte launched Followgram ,which allowed users to receive an RSS feed of their Instagram photos and share their profile with others. Followgram didnt last very long. Not only did its servers crash after I wrote about them, but the next day the site was blocked by Instagram because it was scraping its content through Instagrams undocumented and private API endpoints. Essentially, Instagrams private API is constantly changing and isnt stabile enough for third party developers to use. Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom explained his decision to block Followgram on Quora: I want to say, before anything else, that we are absolutely 100% behind supporting d...

TNW Quick Hit: Following a firestorm of lawsuits, shoutedaccusations, and other general clamor, a judge has laid down the gavel and stated that ex-Microsoft employee Matt Miszewski cant take the job he was hired for at Salesforce. Why not? Because it is in direct violation of his non-compete agreement that he signed with Microsoft. Contracts are as contracts do, as they say. If you recall, Microsoft accused Miszewski of stealing a large cache of files on his exit from the company, files that it does not want Salesforce to see. From our previous coverage : The 25,000 pages of information that Microsoft is furious about could impact the company directly, as it and Salesforce are bitter competitors. They have sparred over legal matters in the past. According to Microsoft, Miszewski is causing actual and substantial injury to the company by working for Salesforce. A state court blocked Miszewski from working at Salesforce with a temporary order, something that Microsoft obviously wishes to...

Youve set up your social accounts and you seem to be gathering your fans online fast, but thinking about what to post online can sometimes seem as tricky as coming up with a wedding toast. We all want to be Liked, so whats the secret to an irresistible to retweet update? Here are 8 Do and Donts for making the most out of your social media presence: DO Be informative. According to research conducted by emarketer,consumers expect more than entertainment when connecting with a brand online; they expect incentives, like offers and coupons. A great number of consumers though (46%), replied that they look for something more substantial than offers just targeted to online fans, such as tips and information about product and services. Posting simple to follow how-tos and useful tips can prove much more effective than posting a link to a specific product or service. Ask your customers to share their tips and personal experience with your products or services in the comments or through tweets ...

Welcome to day two of our new series, YouTube Video of the Day, featuring Timmy, a child who first burst on the scene last year for his rendition of Lady Gagas Bad Romance. I promise you, readers, this series will not always be replete with the antics of precocious children, but given that Timmy racked up three million views for his Bad Romance vid to date and nearly 10,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel (not to mention the immense popularity of Hold It Against Me, Britney Spearss new jam), this video seems prime for virality. This should serve as a challenge to all you cat owners out there teach kitty some new tricks, so as to vanquish the rising tide of adorable, semi-embarrassing children aiming to make YouTube their kingdom. More About: viral video , viral-video-of-day , youtube For more Video coverage: Follow Mashable Video on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Video channel Download our free apps for Android , Mac , iPhone and iPad

We recently shared an infographic comparing the fortunes of Apple with those of Ikea. Now heres the sequel that takes the obvious next step of comparing Microsoft with the Swedish furniture giant. Fixr

While AirBnB s Rent a holiday home from a local formula has proved popular in the US, its still relatively unknown elsewhere in the world. Pouncing on this opportunity, Qype founder Stephan Uhrenbacher has launched a European rival based on the same idea 9flats . Opening for business today after having been in stealth mode for three months, the service is very much like AirBnB, withaccommodationthat users can rent directly from owners. The 9flats name comes from the page design, which will always show nine places to stay. Although, like its more established rival, it offers accommdation around the world, 9flats is specifically targeting the European market. However, Germany-based Uhrenbacher is keen for 9flats not to be seen as Just another European clone of a successful US startup. Hes focusing on making discovery of perfect places to stay a key USP for the site. At present, this manifests itself through a simple, Hunch-like Match & Magic picture quiz to help narrow down your pe...

The Apple rumor-mill is really churning out some product this week. According to site fscklog , the above image is a preview of what the new 13-inch MacBook Pro will look like. Whats new andnotable? An Intel Core i5 processor, SDXC card slot, available matte screen, and Intels Light Peak technology. Renamed by Apple as Thunderbolt which is totally different than the ThunderBolt Intels high-speed bus technology provides data transfer speeds of 10Gb per second with speeds of up to 100Gb/s in the future. At 10Gb/s, you could transfer a full-length Blu-Ray movie in less than 30 seconds, explains Intel. It has been widely rumored that Apple and Intel will hold independent press conferences on Thursday to formally introduce the new wares. Hit the jump for an image of the purported Thunderbolt logo. Read [fscklog] Read [Light Peak]

Apples in-app subscriptions service and associated terms and conditions are coming under some serious fire as of late, as publishers and app developers query whether maintaining an iOS application will be beneficial to their revenue model if Apple intends on taking 30% of app subscription fees. Today Ben Drury, CEO of music service 7Digital , identified that problems will soon emerge as music servicesincluding7Digital and other more high profile services like Spotify will start making losses if they are forced to pay 30% of subscriptions to Apple, other companies wouldnt be able to afford to launch an app on an iOS device. We reported yesterday on Apple CEO Steve Jobs email, stating that only publishers would be subject to the terms imposed by Apples in-app subscriptions. Spotify, being a music publisher, would fall into this category. In his interview with The Telegraph Drury said that despite news of Spotifys recent $100 million investment, the company would become loss-making if A...

Our first indication of a delivery date for the Gingerbread iteration of Android came way back in May when we were perusing the FAQ to Google's then newly announced WebM video format . There should be no expressions of shock, therefore, to hear that WebM support has indeed been added into Google's mobile OS, with the lowest compatible version being today's freshly introduced Android 2.3.3 . Google has already demonstrated its intention to brute-force this format into our lives, which we'll be quite happy to accept just as soon as Gingerbread starts appearing on more devices than its own Nexi . Android 2.3.3 gives you another reason to want it: WebM support originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Feb 2011 05:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | Email this | Comments

Netflix on Tuesday announced a new deal with CBS that will bring shows from the CBS library to Netflixs portfolio of streaming content. The news comes on the same day Amazon finally debuted its new streaming video service for Amazon Prime members . Netflix and CBS did not disclose the terms of the deal, saying only that it will bring CBS content to Netflixs Watch Instantly service for the next two years. CBS also has an option to extend the deal for another two years.Content covered by this new deal includes episodes of new shows such as Medium and Flashpoint , as well as full seasons of shows like Frasier and Cheers . We are thrilled to be bringing CBS shows to Netflix and are looking forward to growing our relationship over time, Netflixs Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said in a statement.Netflix is now the only online premium subscription service with shows featured on all four broadcast networks and dozens of cable TVs biggest brands.Hit the break for the full press release f...