8 Things Likely To Happen in 2013

December 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment

2012 was an exciting year for technology and the world. But it was also a year of a lot of surprises. We expect a lot to happen in 2013. Here are 8 of our predictions.

1. The world will end

The Mayans may not have had the ability to accurately predict the end of the world, but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen. From Global Warming to exponential population growth, we’re all screwed. 2013 will likely be the end for us.

2. Mark Zuckerberg will come out of the closet

Let’s be honest. Mark Zuckerberg clearly has eyes for guys. Just look at his face. He’s always on the verge of spilling the news. Stop kidding yourself Zucks. There are plenty of guys out there waiting for you. Drop the beard and get out there.

3. Color app will try one more time

Color has become regarded as one of the biggest startup failures of our time, flopping after raising $41 million dollars. They launched, started over, relaunched, and just couldn’t get momentum for the life of them. Apple may have bought their talent, but that doesn’t mean it’s over. We expect a new version of Color to make its debut in 2013.

4. Zynga will launch Farmville 3, 4, and 5

Zynga has been a huge disaster in 2012. After launching their IPO and many lackluster titles, many key executives and employees left and many others were let go in a desperate attempt to salvage the company in its free-fall. Though they tried to get creative, they’ve got to stick with what works if they have a shot in recovering.

5. Facebook will look exactly the same

Oh wait! We just heard a rumor that Facebook may add another link to their sidebar! I guess it won’t look exactly the same.

6. 9,242,159 photo sharing apps will launch

After Instagram’s $1 billion buyout, and now their policy backlash, there’s a good chance we’ll see even more photo sharing apps in 2013. How many apps does it take to share a photo? Millions.

7. Red Bull will sponsor first “Moon to Earth” skydive.

Diving from space was pretty cool, but how do you top that? Diving from the moon, of course!

8. Pebble Smartwatch will get closer to shipping

The Pebble Smartwatch was one of Kickstarter’s most successful projects of all time. After pushing back their original shipment date from September to the holidays, then from the holidays to 2013, it’s pretty clear that more delays are lurking. This is what happens when we give a bunch of money to a guy with a cool idea and hope he figures out how to handle distribution and manufacturing.

 

Filed Under: Business, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Raspberry Pie sales up 950% this holiday. Kids left without Raspberry Pi’s.

December 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Kids these days have it too easy. If they want a top of the line desktop or laptop computer, they have plenty of prebuilt options. There was a time not many years ago where, if you wanted a great computer, you had to order parts and build it yourself. It was an incredible learning experience, one that would lead to a better knowledge of how computers work. But now, it’s

much less necessary to build a computer. But, parts have gotten cheaper.. and smaller.. and a lot better. Thus, Raspberry Pi was born – a tiny, functional computer for $35. It’s nothing more than a motherboard with a few required connected parts. It’s enough to give you everything you need, and cheap enough that you’re not afraid to break it. It’s a wonderful way for people to experiment, to hack, and to learn and get creative.

As one would expect, it was a hot Christmas item this year. But, parents and grandparents have no idea what a Raspberry Pi is. This year, many kids were left disappointed as they unwrapped raspberry pies. Instead of a hackable computer, they were left with a mildly tasty, unconventional dessert.

These mistakes lead to a surge in raspberry pie sales across the country. So much, in fact, that it has become one of the top pie flavors nationwide this holiday season, just below apple and cherry.

Will these sales continue? We’ll be watching (and eating).

 

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: , , ,

Google+ reaches huge milestone: 1,000 “active” users

December 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Google+, Google’s social network, has been a major focus at Google. They have put a lot of resources and effort into making it the social web that connects all of their products and services. Though it’s nothing more than a Facebook competitor, Google has much bigger plans for its product, planning to bring it to Google’s core to leverage interaction and valuable profile data to enhance their services. Though Google has been touting huge growth and massive amounts of new users, we decided to do our own research.

The latest numbers from Google claim that Google+ has reached 500 million users and 100 million “active users”. This is an impressive stat, given that the service has only existed for about a year and a half. But, when you actually use the service, you may notice that only 1 or 2 of your friends ever say a word on the service. Are we supposed to believe that 1 in 5 users are using Google+ on a regular basis? WRONG.

Though we had every intention of doing our own research, we actually didn’t have any way to conduct this research, or really any clue how we would get these numbers on our own. Luckily, we have an inside source at Google, so we just pawned it off on him (or her – but most likely him , let’s be honest). Anyway, long story short, there are only 1,000 total users using Google+ on a daily basis. And, the term “using” is meant to be taking lightly. We don’t mean posting every day, we mean actually visiting the site daily.

And if you were curious where Google came up with that 100 million “active users” number, they measure “active users” as a user who has logged in to the Google+ service at least once. One time. That means that 400 million users probably signed up on accident, or thought they were getting a Gmail account, or both.

Anyway, Merry Christmas.

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Evernote launches 5.1.2 iOS app update fixing bugs

December 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Today marks one of the biggest days in our known history. Two significant things have happened. The first – we survived the end of the world. Second – Evernote, the popular note taking application, has launched their long awaited 5.1.2 iOS app update. Included in this update are some very important fixes, including some spelling corrections, a slightly greener button and a crash that effected some iPhone 3G users running iOS 3.1.

“We are thrilled to announce a significant update to our application today”, said Evernote’s CEO. “We believe that the slightly greener button that you’ll see when editing a notebook and the couple spelling corrections will provide the experience our users have been waiting for. You’ve spoken up, and we heard you. We feel that we’re now much closer to the product we have spent years trying to achieve.”

What can we expect to see in the next Evernote version? “We’re working hard on our next big update already. Though I can’t reveal our plans, I’ll give you a hint. It may or may not have something to do with the loading screen.”

If only we could have that update for Christmas.

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Instagram ignites users to read others’ Policies and Terms; scary stuff everywhere

December 20, 2012 By 2 Comments

Instagram has found themselves in hot water over changes that were made to the company’s Privacy Policy this week. According to the update, Instagram now has the legal option to sell any photo shared via the service. As one might expect, this was met with fierce criticism from the community, with many users swearing to leave the service forever. This also sparked a renewed interest in the reading and understanding the Terms of Use and Privacy Policies with all web services and applications, leading to shocking discoveries everywhere.

Our first tip came from a Farmville user. Deep in the Farmville Terms of Use was this little terrifying gem.

5.1.4  In the event of a situation that is deemed appropriate by Zynga or any entity or property of Zynga, the user may be asked to forfeit any number of U.S. dollars or personal assets to Zynga, determined by Zynga, and may not be contested by the user. The user will receive written notice via mail or electronic mail, and will be required to comply within thirty (30) days of the delivery of the written notice.

According to these terms, Zynga can simply take any amount of your personal money or assets for any reason they want. They can simply say “Hey, we want $10,000″ and you’d be legally required to send them a check within 30 days. Yikes!

Another tipster sent us this horrifying section in the Privacy Policy of the new MySpace.

44.2  If a user uploads an image or piece of content to MySpace that any executive, employee, member of the MySpace Board of Directors or Justin Timberlake disagrees with or believes in any way misrepresents the vision for MySpace, the user will be required to dismember their right index finger, then package and send said index finger to MySpace Headquarters via the United States Postal Service within five (5) business days.

How did this one slip by many thousands of users already? And who did they hire as their lawyer, the guy from Saw? It’s scary to think that there are savage terms like these buried within a policy that no one reads. What else have we agreed to without our knowledge?

Probably this. A tipster sent us this paragraph from Facebook’s Terms of Use.

551.22  Facebook does not, in no way, not own your entire identity. All content uploaded to and provided to Facebook, and content not uploaded to Facebook but can be discovered through other means, including but not limited to photos, videos, messages, phone numbers, email addresses, social security numbers, passports and credit card numbers, will not not be property of Facebook. Facebook vows to never not have the ability to do anything and everything deemed necessary with this data and content, for any reason at any time.

If you can navigate the double negatives, I’m pretty sure Facebook said that they can and will own all of your identity and will do anything they want with it at any time. That’s frightening.

I think it’s safe to say that we should all just stop clicking “I Agree” to every Terms of Use and policy and start reading these things before we all become property of Internet services.

Filed Under: Business, Social Networks Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Apple Maps launches on Android

December 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past several months, you have probably heard about the disaster that has been Apple Maps. Apple replaced Google Maps with their own map app in their latest iOS update, leaving much to be desired. Many bugs, issues, and lack of data made for a worse solution than the previous one, causing lots of public bashing, frustrations and embarrassments. It became the center of attention at Apple, forcing them to apologize, shake up some executives, and put the weight of the company behind cleaning up the disaster.

While Apple was seemingly hard at work improving their maps behind the scenes, a brand new Google Maps app launched in Apple’s App Store, proving to be a great replacement. It soared to the most downloaded app in just a few hours. It seemed like a strange situation. Why would Apple allow a better map application from their direct competitor appear on their app store?

Today, Apple has launched Apple Maps on Android. Many users are reporting that the application is already better than Google Maps, with new features including rumored integration with Foursquare data, massively improved flyover images, corrected map data, new turn-by-turn voices including the voice of Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook and much more. This was a strange, but very strategic move for Apple. Some are calling it a “bait and switch”. Tim Cook sent an official statement to AllThingsD.

Apple Maps has been the focus at Apple for the last several months and we feel we have made some phenomenal progress. We think that Apple Maps for Android will help expose Android users to the wonderful experience we provide at Apple. We have every intention of bringing this fantastic update to iOS, but you’ll have to wait for iOS7. We only update our software once a year. We believe that’s what our customers want.

We reached out to a few Android users for comment to see how the community is reacting to this new app. “I downloaded Apple Maps for Android just to show my friends. They are going to crack up”, said Justin Wingler. “Put that part on the record. Off the record, it’s actually really great. I’m already using it over Google Maps. Please don’t write that though.”

Unfortunately for Justin, we have no integrity at Mockcrunch.

Filed Under: Apple, Google Tagged With: , , , ,

Dollar Tree Launches Android App Store [BREAKING]

July 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In March, Amazon launched their own app store for Android apps. You might be thinking, “why would Amazon launch an app store?” Well, let’s put it this way. I have no idea. It’s weird. In fact, it weirds me out so much that I’ve decided to put no effort in researching how the hell it works. Do they have exclusive apps that aren’t in Google’s own app store, “Google Play” (ugh that name, another thing that I don’t want to get into). Are they selling the same apps at a different cost than Google Play? Does that mean if I own an Android device, I’m obligated to search several app stores just to find a todo list app?

Well, the saturation continues today as America’s favorite dollar store, Dollar Tree has decided to make their mobile debut with their own Android app store. Their motivation is clear – they intend to only sell apps priced at $1. No more, no less. Apps included in Dollar Tree Appstore at launch will be Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, and around 2,000 camera apps.

We reached out to Dollar Tree CEO, Bob Sasser for comment. “Do what? What are we launching?” I told Bob about the Appstore. “Android? Well we sell some robot toys in our stores but I don’t know what that is specifically. We may carry it. Give your nearest Dollar Tree a call.” I went on to explain smartphones, told him all about the app ecosystem, how mobile platforms work, etc. I talked for nearly an hour. “Adam, let me stop you there. The things you’ve just said to me are way over my head. We sell retail items for a dollar. We don’t do any of this gadget stuff.”

I was pretty frustrated at this point, so we got the Mockcrunch team on the case. From our research, we were able to determine that a single Dollar Tree corporate intern was behind this initiative. We reached out to James Farely, the intern who created the project. “Dollar Tree needs innovation. Our CEO is clueless, so I thought I’d help out a bit. I didn’t take this to Bob because I knew he wouldn’t get it.”

We asked James if any executives were aware of the Dollar Tree Appstore. “Haha, yeah right”, he said. “This company is a total nightmare. They are still selling retail products at a dollar. The brand is locked in. Inflation continues to rise, and we can’t steer from that dollar price. That just means our products continue to get shittier. In 10 years, we’ll only be selling single sheets of paper.”

Filed Under: Mobile, Technology Tagged With: , , , ,

Apple adds “Shake-To-Undo” iOS feature to Mountain Lion. Computers breaking already.

July 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

With Mountain Lion on the horizon, more and more iOS (mobile) features are starting to make their way to Mac OS X, Apple’s desktop operating system. Beginning with Lion, Apple made it clear that they had a vision to merge the experience of the iPad with the Mac. Mountain Lion plans to take this concept a few steps further, touting new features such as tighter iCloud support, Notification Center, iMessages, Voice Dictation and more, all features well-known to the iOS platform. Today, Apple has added yet another iOS feature to their roster, one that just doesn’t sound like a good idea: Shake-To-Undo.

Shake-To-Undo has been around on iOS since the early days of the iPhone. How does it work? Simply shake the device and a popup appears with a button allowing the user to Undo their last action. It’s a handy and useful feature for iPhones and iPods. iPads, not so much, as its size makes it awkward and a disaster waiting in the wings. Take that further, and now we’re all about to be violently shaking our Macbook Pros and 27″ iMacs when we make a typo.

Only hours after this featured went live in the latest update to the Mountain Lion preview, damaged Mac reports are already coming in. We reached out to David Dougly, a beta user of Mountain Lion and now damaged iMac owner. “Are you f*cking kidding me? What happened to CMD+Z? Is this supposed to make Mac OS X better? Jesus Christ. I tried lifting up my 27″ iMac to shake the god damned thing. I threw my back out and dropped the iMac besides. I’m downgrading to Lion.”

Another beta user, Jake Gruffy, claimed he absolutely destroyed his Macbook Pro. “I needed to Undo so I tried CMD+Z and it didn’t work. I had to Google around, only to discover this horrendous new Undo method. I sighed, picked up my Macbook Pro and shook it a few times. It didn’t work, so I shook it harder. You know what? I saw the stupid Undo popup appear, but only for a split second because it was flying through the air towards the wall. My Macbook Pro looked as if it had been run over by a cement truck. What a total nightmare.”

According to our sources, CMD+Z has been entirely replaced with Shake-To-Undo and there is no alternative method available.

Filed Under: Apple, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

A new app launches on the App Store [BREAKING]

June 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

A company has finally turned their popular website application into an iOS app. Users have been asking for a mobile application for quite some time, as the website experience on their mobile browsers has been poor. Today, after waiting for what has seemed like years but was actually just months, this company’s application has finally launched on the App Store!

This new app includes many features from the website, but for whatever reason, some features are missing. However, the app experience actually seems to be better than the website experience due to simplification of the product. We believe that many users will love the ability to quickly access certain key features from their mobile device that they couldn’t access easily before. Though the interface is nice, there are some issues that need to be addressed. First, one of the features from the website just doesn’t work quite as well on the app. Second, one of the other features doesn’t support something that is important to many users. We’re also hearing that there is a bug that only affects older mobile devices and devices running outdated software. Lastly, many users are upset that this application only supports the last few versions of their mobile software, as apparently many people still haven’t updated to the latest version and feel like developers should care about them.

We expect to see many improvements in the next update of the app. The company’s CTO ensures us that the developers are working hard to add the missing features to the app.

We’re so excited to launch a mobile version of our application. We believe our users want to access our application anywhere, and now they can. We know we are missing some key features, but we wanted to get this version of the application out to satisfy our users. We are working hard to get all of our features in the app. In fact, we can tell you that our next update will absolutely include that one feature everyone wants. We think they will be thrilled with it.

What’s next for the company? “We’ve got a lot of exciting things in the pipeline. We can’t talk about them just yet”, he said with a smile. The company also told us that they have plans to release an Android app, but blamed “device fragmentation” and gave us no indication of time frame. We were also told that they do not expect to have a Blackberry or Windows Phone app anytime in the near future.

 

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Google announces AdShirts product to monetize Project Glass

June 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Today’s post has been written by Tim Sylvester, Founder of Integrated Roadways, an innovative solution for building better, cheaper and more advanced roads.

The tech world hasn’t been able to stop talking about Google’s recently revealed Project Glass, which represents the fusion of two nerd staples, monitors and glasses. Google’s Sebastian Thrun recently demonstrated prototypes which look nothing at all like someone broke Geordi LaForge’s visor, and allows you to seamlessly record videos of yourself doing completely insignificant daily tasks.

Google’s new technology is a major addition to its portfolio, which has easily kept pace with its recent string of product hits. With Google Glass, you no longer have to call your friends and ask what happened after your sixth rum and coke – you can simply rewind and play back. So that’s where your shoes went!

Insiders have informed us that Google’s next project expands the Glass into apparel with their flagship AdShirts digital t-shirt platform. The shirts themselves look like a solid color. However, when you put the glasses on, ads appear. Using startup EyeVerify’s eye tracking and identification technology, the AdShirts platform tracks and identifies your viewers, displaying ads targeted to their interests. For example, if you recently searched for “protein shakes”, you may see a walking ad for Muscle Milk.

AdShirts are available at no cost. The wearer will can make money in a tiered affiliate marketing program for impressions and sales. According to our sources, the Google wearable platform is expected to see a major marketing push in Q4, 2012. Our sources tell us that a partnership has been made with Paramount Pictures, and Jacob and Edward of the Twilight series will be wearing AdShirts in the next Twilight film.

In response to Google’s AdShirts announcement, Facebook CEO Steve Zuckerbing, in conjunction with partner Donna Karan, has announced Facebook’s competing line of wearable clothing, FBDKNY. These stylish denim shirts, vests, and pants will respond to your natural rhythms, automatically posting your status to Facebook as you go about your daily life. Facebook is rumored to have been working on this line in secret for some time, but were delayed by sweating and farts.

Foursquare has also reportedly been collaborating with FBDKNY so that your pants will automatically check-in when you sit down at a new location, but has been plagued by false positives, with 90% of check-ins being accidental by persons trying to play Blockus while pooping.
Twitter was unavailable for comment.

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