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  • HP SlateBook x2 is both an Android tablet and laptop. The laptop part is an Android first for HP.

    Android has become a hedge against Microsoft and Windows

    HP SlateBook x2 is both an Android tablet and laptop. The laptop part is an Android first for HP. (Credit: Hewlett-Packard) Hewlett-Packard rolled out another Android device this week. This could become a pattern as PC makers hedge against a world that's less about Microsoft and more about Goog ...

  • CrunchWeek: Google I/O Madness And Square's New iPad Hardware For Merchants

    It’s that time of the week for CrunchWeek, the show where a few of us writers chat up the most interesting stories from the past seven days. Ryan Lawler, Drew Olanoff (clad in his Google Glass), and I discussed all things Google I/O, including Larry Page’s keynote, Google+’s new photo featu ...

  • New MacBook Airs could be coming in weeks.

    New MacBook Air imminent?

    New MacBook Airs could be coming in weeks. (Credit: Apple) Signs may point to a refresh of Apple's popular MacBook Air. Possibly next month. AppleInsider said Friday that at large online retailers like MacConnection, stock has vanished for the popular 13.3-inch Air with a 1.8GHz processor and ...

  • SMS

    The Future Of Mobile-Social Could Spell The End For Social Networks

    Editor’s note: Keith Teare is the founder of just.me and a partner at Archimedes Labs. He is also the co-founder of TechCrunch. Follow him on Twitter @kteare. Because of Google I/O, this was a momentous week for those of us who are watching the rapid transition that is taking place from des ...

  • Ask Engadget can you use an Android tablet as a graphics tablet

    Ask Engadget: can you use an Android tablet as a graphics tablet?

    We know you've got questions, and if you're brave enough to ask the world for answers, then here's the outlet to do so. This week's Ask Engadget inquiry is from Xan, who wants Cintiq functionality without paying Cintiq prices. If you're looking to ask one of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] ...

  • Cast AR handson with Jeri Ellsworth at Maker Faire 2013

    Cast AR hands-on with Jeri Ellsworth at Maker Faire 2013

    When Valve's first hardware hire, Jeri Ellsworth, tweeted back in February that she was fired from the company, we were disappointed but also intrigued by what she meant by "time for new and exciting projects." Well we finally saw what she's been up to here at at Maker Faire 2013. It's called Ca ...

  • Insert Coin meet Melon, a headband that'll help you learn to focus

    Axio returns as Melon, an EEG headband that'll help you learn to focus

    The quantified self movement's gaining steam, with companies creating all sorts of gadgets to track our activity levels, sleeping habits and even what's going on inside our heads. Melon's an EEG headband that taps into your brain's inner workings to show you how well you maintain mental focus. W ...

  • Mobile Miscellany week of May 13th, 2013

    Mobile Miscellany: week of May 13th, 2013

    If you didn't get enough mobile news during the week, not to worry, because we've opened the firehose for the truly hardcore. This week brought a new handset from Sony to the US and UK, updates to Nokia Creative Suite and three new (and very inexpensive) smartphones from Blu Products. These stor ...

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Twitter partners with NBA to highlight ingame replays, Blake Griffin posterizations

In all honesty, Blake Griffin himself could start a social network that served no purpose outside of featuring his dizzying (and disgusting, if you will) array of dunks, and it'd probably go over quite well. Instead, he -- along with other superstars in the National Basketball Association -- will soon see replays of in-game highlights making waves across Twitter in more official fashion. Hot on the heels of a deal between ESPN and Twitter comes this: a partnership between the NBA and the aforesaid social network that'll get video highlights to the world while the game is still ongoing.

#NBARapidReplay will be the hashtag to watch for as the playoffs progress, and as you'd expect, short advertisements will appear alongside those clips. Twitter's foray into the television universe is hardly a new one, but it's becoming ever more obvious that the company is following the ad dollars into the homes of everyday viewers. Up next? A deal to tweet highlights from the 2014 Masters golf tournament... but only in extremely soft spoken, lowercase, predominantly pompous characters.

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Today, thanks to the maturation of the web, digital tech, and smartphones now in seemingly every pocket, startups are finding it easier than ever before to build scalable solutions to finally address the many inefficiencies in our food manufacturing, production and distribution systems.

As interest in food tech balloons, one area in particular appears to already be at the tipping point: Online and mobile food delivery. Over the last few days, we’ve hearing about a merger between two of the largest companies in the space. Rumor has it that “arch rivals” GrubHub and Seamless are in talks which could see them join forces as part of a merger. While our sources tell us that the talks are serious, the terms of the merger are not yet clear and, of course, any potential deal could fall through.

Furthermore, it’s not yet clear what kind of synergies would take place, how management of the new entity would be structured or even what the new business will be called. The two companies would not confirm on the record on any of the above. But as far as the name goes, we’re hoping for Grubless. Or Hubless GrubSeam. But they have a nice ring to them, don’t they?

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Oh HTC. You’ve produced one of the finest Android smartphones ever (seriously, just look at all these reviews), but you’ve faced more than your share of challenges when it came to actually pumping your top-tier One smartphone. As it happens, that may all soon change.

FocusTaiwan reported earlier today that HTC is preparing to pump out more of its wonderful Ones in short order — Jack Tong, the company’s North Asia president, noted that this month’s production capacity for the flagship device is twice that of April, and that surge will only continue into June.

Sounds pretty yawn-worthy, right? Normally I would spend too much time dwelling on the finer points of production capacity, but here’s a device that was launched to widespread praise by an underdog smartphone company some people have written off, and HTC has basically been getting screwed thanks to part shortages for the One’s Ultrapixel camera and a brief injunction due to the HDR microphone it uses. It’s like a perfect storm of headaches for a company that really, really doesn’t need it — one look at its Q1 financials and it’s clear that HTC needed this launch to go as smoothly as possible. It didn’t.

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Google made a relatively quiet announcement today regarding how it’s pushing the developer ecosystem forward around Google Now, its intelligent personal assistant for Android devices. The company has begun extending mark up tools for emails from select partners, which help highlight flight schedules, hotel bookings and various types of reservations, to make sure that Gmail can spot that information and use it to auto-generate helpful reminders in Google Now.

The extension of the platform tools available to Now partners was announced by Google’s Baris Gultekin, who was one of the creators of Google Now, which sprung out of a project he came up with in his so-called “20 percent time.” He spoke with Google’s Louis Gray ont he Developer Live video stream which ran throughout the I/O conference this year.

Gultekin was talking about ways in which Google is working to improve the quality and relevancy of the recommendations and data it surfaces. The project sounds like it’s fairly limited for now, but asking for help from the input sources of data seems like a smart way to supplement Google’s own data detection algorithms that are working to flag interesting data for Now’s use on their own data center side. Doing all the heavy lifting themselves might be more impressive, but if reaching out to partners can help improve user experience, then there’s no reason not to extend that hand.

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Google made a relatively quiet announcement today regarding how it’s pushing the developer ecosystem forward around Google Now, its intelligent personal assistant for Android devices. The company has begun extending mark up tools for emails from select partners, which help highlight flight schedules, hotel bookings and various types of reservations, to make sure that Gmail can spot that information and use it to auto-generate helpful reminders in Google Now.

The extension of the platform tools available to Now partners was announced by Google’s Baris Gultekin, who was one of the creators of Google Now, which sprung out of a project he came up with in his so-called “20 percent time.” He spoke with Google’s Louis Gray ont he Developer Live video stream which ran throughout the I/O conference this year.

Gultekin was talking about ways in which Google is working to improve the quality and relevancy of the recommendations and data it surfaces. The project sounds like it’s fairly limited for now, but asking for help from the input sources of data seems like a smart way to supplement Google’s own data detection algorithms that are working to flag interesting data for Now’s use on their own data center side. Doing all the heavy lifting themselves might be more impressive, but if reaching out to partners can help improve user experience, then there’s no reason not to extend that hand.

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BlackBerry software chief on BB10 software updates and a focus on healthcare and financial services

During BlackBerry Live this week we got to speak with Vivek Bhardwaj, BlackBerry's Head of Software, about the future of BB10. In light of the the platform's first major software update rolling out to its devices, we asked about the plans for future releases. Bhardwaj told us that the plan is for them to come at a regular cadence of one major code update per year, with other, incremental updates for specific devices sprinkled in as needed. A particular focus is to do so while delivering devs fully realized hardware and to avoid fragmentation in the code base -- making it easier to create BB10 apps.

While he wouldn't dish details about features coming to BB10 in those updates, Bhardwaj did explain that he's working on making BB10 a platform particularly suited for use not only in cars, but also in the healthcare and financial services industries. That focus is a part of the mobile computing ethos espoused by CEO Thorsten Heins meant to have BB10 devices be users' personal, portable computing terminal that is simply plugged into a screen -- whether it's a desktop monitor, a car or somewhere else -- that delivers a uniform experience. When asked whether those screens would include TVs, Bhardwaj didn't rule it out, but he did say that home experiences weren't a priority because it's a crowded space and BB10 "is all about getting things done." As a result, the number one focus is building out a compelling automotive platform, with healthcare and financial services coming in a close second. So, folks thinking BB10 was BlackBerry betting on consumers instead of the enterprise, think again. The more things change, the more they seem to stay the same -- at least when the folks in Waterloo are involved.

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Just about six months ago, Uber won a big battle with D.C. regulators to have its on-demand car service approved for operation within the nation’s capital. But new regulations from the D.C. Taxi Commission could severely hamper the company’s ability to offer low-cost services in the district.

Last December, the D.C. City Council voted to approve a legal framework that legitimized mobile e-hail applications there, as long as those applications followed certain rules. It defined a new class of for-hire vehicles (taxis and sedans) that could use mobile apps as a way to connect drivers and passengers.

The unanimous City Council vote followed a year of negotiations with local regulators to get its services approved for usage within the district. (The very public fight even included a sting operation by D.C. Taxi Commissioner Ron Linton in which he took an Uber and then handed over a variety of fines to the driver.) Still, after a whole lot of back-and-forth, it seemed like Uber was finally in the clear.

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Earlier today, Yahoo sent press invites to a "product-related" event in New York City Monday afternoon and there are already two separate rumors about the company's plans. The first, from Bloomberg, concerns the event specifically and cites a "person familiar with the matter" reporting we'll hear about new updates for Yahoo's once-mighty Flickr photo service. The second is from AllThingsD which has upgraded rumors of a Tumblr purchase from possible to possibly imminent, saying the company's board will meet Sunday to decide whether it will make a $1.1 billion all-cash offer for the site. Since new CEO Marissa Mayer took over Yahoo has made a number of acquisitions with a focus on improving its homepage, content and app offerings including Flickr. That announcement is also penciled in for the 20th, but whatever actually goes down you can be sure we'll have the details as they're unveiled around 4PM ET.

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Zynga has apparently told the makers of the dating website CupidWithFriends that they need to change the site’s name, because it allegedly infringes on Zynga’s trademarks.

CupidWithFriends was built by the startup Apartment 7 (which also released the dating apps Flock and Wednesday Night). The site launched a couple of months ago, allowing users to build and edit dating profiles for their friends.

Apartment 7 co-founder Jared Tame just forwarded me a copy of the letter from Zynga’s lawyers. I’ve pasted the full letter at the end of this post, but the gist is that users are likely to think that CupidWithFriends is associated in some way with Zynga (which acquired the developer of the With Friends mobile gaming franchise, a franchise that recently expanded with the launch of Running With Friends). So the social gaming company is demanding that CupidWithFriends change its name by May 24.

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Zynga has apparently told the makers of the dating website CupidWithFriends that they need to change the site’s name, because it allegedly infringes on Zynga’s trademarks.

CupidWithFriends was built by the startup Apartment 7 (which also released the dating apps Flock and Wednesday Night). The site launched a couple of months ago, allowing users to build and edit dating profiles for their friends.

Apartment 7 co-founder Jared Tame just forwarded me a copy of the letter from Zynga’s lawyers. I’ve pasted the full letter at the end of this post, but the gist is that users are likely to think that CupidWithFriends is associated in some way with Zynga (which acquired the developer of the With Friends mobile gaming franchise, a franchise that recently expanded with the launch of Running With Friends). So the social gaming company is demanding that CupidWithFriends change its name by May 24.

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