West Penn Allegheny Health System creates an emergency responder app, placing your life in far better hands
Creating a health-minded application for those who are unconscious, dead, or creeping awfully close to death might not do much good, but creating a health-minded application for those who care for the near-dead... now that's a novel concept! The West Penn Allegheny Health System has just churned out the EMS Field Partner app for iPod touch and iPhone, giving emergency medical services (EMS) profe
Google Fixes Problem With Missing 150,000 Gmail Accounts
The problem with those 150,000 missing Gmail accounts “should be resolved,” according to Google.Last Sunday morning, about 0.08% of all Gmail users were in for a rude awakening. Their e-mail accounts seem to have vanished overnight.The next day, Google dutifully apologized, promising a quick fix for the problem, saying it might need to restore the missing accounts by retrieving them from off-li
The @Font-Face Rule and Useful Web Font Tricks
The possibility of embedding any font you like into websites via @font-face is an additional stylistic device which promises to abolish the monotony of the usual system fonts. It surely would be all too easy if there was only one Web font format out there. Instead, there’s quite a variety, as you will get to know in this article.This quick introduction to @font-face will lead you towards a gui
Apple’s iPad 2 Launch: What You Need To Know
Greetings from rainy San Francisco, where Apple’s long-anticipated launch of the iPad 2 is about to get underway at the Yerba Buena Center For the Arts Theater. We’ll be bringing you the important details as they come in — no need to scroll down pages of breathless liveblogging. If you’re just interested in the hardware, go here. And check out our gallery of the event at the bottom to see all the
Google adding web-based in-app payments, probably some time in May
It's not enough that you'll soon be able to make in-app purchases on Android, Google wants to give you an outlet for your app spending online as well. The search giant is hard at work turning last year's acquisition of Jambool and its Social Gold software into a web-based in-app payments platform it can call its own. Jambool's proprietors have word that Google's system is now in beta, which has l
Facebook VP Explains New Comments System
Facebook launched a slew of updates to its public commenting platform Tuesday, but the company didn’t do too much commenting about it in public. The exception: Dan Rose, Facebook’s VP of Partnerships and Platform Marketing, who spoke at the Webtrends Engage conference in San Francisco.In the video below, exclusive to Mashable, Rose explains exactly what will change with the Comments plugin. Fir
Facebook Continues Its Drive to Own the Conversation
Facebook did two very different things Tuesday that show how the social network is stepping up its efforts to become a key player in the way people communicate online. The first was the acquisition of Beluga, a group-messaging startup that we have written about a number of times here at GigaOM, and the second was the news that the giant social network is rolling out its new commenting plugin to a
HP derides BlackBerry PlayBook OS as a 'fast imitation' of webOS, RIM says it's just good UI design
It's not rare to hear talk of other operating systems employing webOS-like elements -- we've been asking to see its elegant notification system in iOS for years -- but RIM's BlackBerry Playbook borrows so heavily from the UI concepts of the software built by Palm and now owned by HP that it could easily be confused for a webOS tablet. It handles multiple concurrent applications using a card view
Loopt Brings Real-Time Rewards Alerts to SXSW
The location-based service Loopt is introducing a new feature that will alert users of nearby deals or rewards, and it’s launching at SXSW Interactive.The feature, called Rewards Alerts, combines elements of the Loopt Rewards system with the app’s proximity alerts. The concept behind Reward Alerts is to keep users abreast of flash deals taking place in their general vicinity.Users who are logge
Mobile Cloud Startup Blaast Raises Seed Money
Blaast, a Finnish mobile startup that’s still in stealth mode, has raised a substantial seed round from a gaggle of European investors, according to sources. Ambient Sound — an investment group started by four of the engineers who built Skype — is believed to have led the funding, which could be as high as €2.6 million ($3.6 million USD). Helsinki-based Blaast is remaining quiet and won’t share de
9 Apps To Make You Super Productive on Windows, Mac & Linux
The Cross-Platform Apps Series is supported by VMware Fusion, the best way to run Windows on your Mac. Click Here to learn more about VMware Fusion. To keep up with VMware Fusion updates, follow the “TeamFusion” blog or on Twitter or Facebook.You may think you’ve reached the peak possible productivity on Windows, Mac and Linux, but if you haven’t tried this collection of timesavers, it’s time t
Why Can't Apple Just Make iOS Notifications Like This?
If there's one thing at the top of our iOS wish list, it's for a better notification system. Especially now that Android and webOS have figured out a way to make notifications seamless and unobtrusive, Apple's roadblock system has become seriously outmoded. More »
Hyundai Sonata Hybrid was delayed into 2011... by 'virtual engine sound' system
Remember how at the end of last year the US legislature decided to make it mandatory for EVs to churn out an audible noise while in motion? It was all in the name of saving pesky pedestrians from getting in the way of your gliding electro-car, but the new law itself has managed to create a bump in the road for at least one company. Hyundai's Sonata Hybrid was all set to launch in late 2010, equip
HTC Incredible S, Desire HD, Desire Z and original Desire will all be eating Gingerbread by the end of June
When it launched the Incredible S at MWC a couple of weeks ago, HTC promised the new 4-inch device would be quick to get a Gingerbread update and now it's giving us a definitive schedule for it by saying that Android 2.3 will be distributed to its new flagship phone by the end of Q2 2011. We're not sure four months of sitting by the window waiting for the OTA update to float in necessarily matche
How Cloud Computing & Web Services Are Changing the IT Job Market
As cloud and web services continue to gain speed, the upfront cost of launching a product is decreasing. Businesses can create more for less money –- and with less people.Though in the long run this likely means fewer IT positions, it’s currently changing a different aspect of the tech job market: desired skill sets.Unlike traditional software products, cloud and web services revolve around con
Unconventional Monetary Policy and Central Bank Communications
Vice Chair Janet L. Yellen At the University of Chicago Booth School of Business U.S. Monetary Policy Forum, New York, New York February 25, 2011 > ~~~ The U.S. Monetary Policy Forum has become an important venue for promoting an exchange of views among policymakers, academics, and financial market participants. I’m pleased to participate in this panel on lessons learned about unconventional mo
Apple’s iPad Still Has No Competition
Editor’s Note: Jim Dalrymple has been writing about Apple for more than 15 years. You can follow him on Twitter @jdalrymple and on his Web site at The Loop. It’s been almost a year since Apple released the iPad and we’re less than a week away from the unveiling of the iPad 2, and still there’s no competition. There are a few very good reasons for Apple’s success and why its competitors are findi
Fly Or Die (Tablet Edition): The Motorola Xoom And The Kno
In this week’s episode of Fly or Die, CrunchGear editor John Biggs and I do a special tablet edition where we take on the new Motorola Xoom and the Kno. (Watch the video above). The Xoom is the first tablet to come out with the Android Honeycomb operating system, which is optimized for tablets. So you can basically forget about all of those other Android tablets that came out in January at CES.
39 New Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed
This week was all about Apple buzz (new iPad? new OS? New Macbook!?) and the launch of a brand new section on Mashable. Explore is a streamlined way to get to all those great tools and resources we’ve published. After you have a look through this week’s tools and resources, head on over to get your learn on.Below you’ll find some first looks at Apple’s new OS, Lion, a guide to taking your busin
Let’s Calm Down On The Google-ITA Deal
This guest post is written by Daniel A. Crane, who is Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. He is an expert in antitrust law. Google’s proposed acquisition of ITA Software, which provides a management system for airfare pricing and shopping services, has become ground zero for the burgeoning coalition of interests intent on stopping Google’s perceived dominance in Internet s
My Message To Google: Stop Cheating
In mid February, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt expressed pride in Google employee Wael Ghonim’s brave struggle against the autocratic Mubarak regime to establish political transparency in Egypt. “We are very, very proud of what Wael and that group was able to do in Egypt,” Schmidt said in Barcelona. But what Schmidt needs to do now is apply G
The Future of the Connected Car
Most of us who watched Knight Rider as a kid expected that by 2011 we would be driving sleek, self-aware cars like KITT — cars that would take us seamlessly from A to B while cracking witty one-liners.Though that future has not yet come to pass, things are starting to get exciting in the in-car technology space. Connected cars are hitting the consumer market in a price bracket that makes them a
Bring Your Tumblr Content to WordPress With Ease
Commercial WordPress theme shop WooThemes launched Thursday a new exporter that makes it easy for Tumblr users to transfer their blog content and media to a self-hosted WordPress.org website.Thanks to the new Post Formats feature in WordPress 3.1, it’s easier than ever to create a Tumblr-like experience in WordPress. That means post types such as images, links or quotes can be styled and organi
MIT Builds an OS to Give Multicore Chips a Heartbeat
Human beings are complicated organisms that have evolved entire systems of feedback and governance to ensure our minds and our bodies are performing well. When we overheat, we sweat, and when we need food, we get hungry, then eat. As our computers become more complicated through the addition of multiple cores, MIT scientists are working on an operating system to create a similar system of feedbac
The Post-Optical Disc Era Gets Off To A Rocky Start With The OS X Lion Beta
If there was any doubt in peoples’ minds that Apple intends to kill off the optical disc, it was put to rest today. This morning’s unveiling of the OS X Lion Developer Preview came with the news that it would only be available one way: through the Mac App Store. And while Apple wouldn’t say if they intended to release the final version of Lion to consumers this summer in the same way, it’s pretty
Swipe, Save And Serve: What’s New in Mac OS X Lion
Apple released the first developer preview of Mac OS X Lion Thursday, offering a glimpse of what can be expected from the next iteration of its desktop operating system.Slated for release this summer, Mac OS X Lion is all about fusing the worlds of Mac OS X and iOS together. On its Mac OS X Lion Preview page, Apple sums it up best: “The power of Mac OS X. The magic of iPad.”Some of the features
First Look: Mac OS X Lion
Mac OS X Lion was released to registered Mac OS X developers on Thursday — and a member of the developer community has provided Mashable with some screenshots of the upcoming version of Apple’s desktop operating system.Keep in mind that what you see here is only valid as of February 2011, and could change by the time Mac OS X Lion is released in the summer of 2011. Desktop Dock Mission Con