The Review Blog

Up until now, the Boost Mobile crowd’s been missing out on those fancy visual voicemail creations, but that’s about to change starting on May 31st. Earlier today, Smith Micro announced it’s delivering its Visual Voicemail features to the prepaid-friendly carrier, with the upcoming Boost-branded HTC EVO Design 4G being the first slab to offer said tidbits. Smith Micro is also adding an optional service dubbed “Voicemail-to-Text,” which — for an extra $1.99 per month — will essentially turn those vocal messages into words and send them to you via text message or email. With the launch of the “four-gee” waves in mind, we’re certain you’re enjoying all the incoming news of late.

Continue reading Boost Mobile set to offer Smith Micro’s Visual Voicemail features starting on May 31st

Boost Mobile set to offer Smith Micro’s Visual Voicemail features starting on May 31st originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 May 2012 16:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Most of us think of Commodore’s pre-C64 computing history in terms of the still-legendary PET-2001, but an eBay auction run by Lawrence Bezuska shows just how far back the tradition really goes. He’s selling a KIM-1, the stripped-down hobbyist computer from Chuck Peddle that was the foundation for what the PET became. It’s so old that it was originally made by MOS Technologies in 1976 — Commodore bought the company and kept making the KIM-1 until 1981. Inside, you’re still looking at a 6502 chip, although you get just 1.12Kb of RAM and lose more than a few things that even DIY enthusiasts take for granted today, such as a power supply. There’s no way you’ll play Doom on it, then, but the winning bidder does get the luxury of a keypad just inches away from bare circuitry. If you’re quick enough to make the May 17th auction deadline and miss the days of very, very low-level programming, be sure to check the source link.

Rare Commodore KIM-1 hits eBay, shows you the PET’s barebones roots originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 May 2012 16:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Eton, the name behind solar-powered sound systems and emergency radios, is updating its disaster-preparedness portfolio with the new FRX series of self-powered radios. The FRX 1, FRX 2 and FRX 3 use hand-turbine energy to keep the internal lithium ion battery juiced, and all include a glow-in-the-dark indicator, LED flashlight and DC input. While the FRX 1 offers only the basic components, the FRX 2 and 3 have solar panels for recharging, along with a headphone jack and a USB port for powering other gadgets. The FRX 3 boasts a digital alarm and radio — as opposed to the analog radio on the FRX 2 — and a display for receiving NOAA weather alerts. Eton priced the radios at $25, $40 and $60, respectively, and it’s currently selling the three options with American Red Cross co-branding at outlets such as Amazon, Best Buy and REI. Realizing your crank-powered Raptor is on its last legs? Check out the PR past the break.

Continue reading Eton anticipates next natural disaster with self-powered FRX radios

Eton anticipates next natural disaster with self-powered FRX radios originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 May 2012 15:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Carrying on in the esteemed tradition of Facebook hackathons, there will be an all-nighter on Thursday at the company’s Menlo Park headquarters that culminates with CEO Mark Zuckerberg ringing in the NASDAQ bell ahead of the company’s much, much, much anticipated IPO.

There is an internal event page for the big day that has about a thousand Facebook employees RSVP-ing for the bell ringing early on Friday morning. We can’t tell if there are any other big festivities prepared ahead of time. It’s all up in the air. Some people may dress up though. We don’t know if the gong will be used. Zuck will probably give some remarks as he has ahead of other hackathons.

“We want to get everyone together and remind ourselves that this company is about building things,” a source says.

Facebook has long emphasized the “Hacker Way,” which is about building things fast and constantly iterating on the status quo. Zuckerberg argued in Facebook’s original IPO filing that the word ‘hacker’ has long been misconstrued.

“The word “hacker” has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers,” he wrote. “In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. Like most things, it can be used for good or bad, but the vast majority of hackers I’ve met tend to be idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world.”

In the tradition of other hackathons, expect some interesting product ideas to get fleshed out. Facebook Hackathons are a chance for employees to work on half-baked ideas and turn them into real products that eventually get shipped. Everything from Facebook’s chat system to an early version of Timeline called ‘Memories’ have come out of Hackathons. Even the famous ‘Fax’ button that Facebook once pranked Jason Kincaid with also came out of a hackathon.

In the meantime, while you’re in between reading all of mainstream media and blogosphere’s senseless blathering about what Facebook is really worth, enjoy these photos of Facebook employees sleeping at headquarters.

Update: Facebook engineering manager Pedram Keyani complains in the comments that we are not showing enough people hacking and perhaps giving a misguided impression that people sleep at Facebook hackathons. So correction: They do not sleep. They rage.

It’s been amazing how technology-enabled aggregation can make certain things in life so much easier — spaces such such as travel planning, real estate searching, and news reading come to mind. But when it comes to the financial space, that disruption hasn’t quite happened yet. Most of us have a retirement account here, a checking and savings account there, a credit card or two somewhere else, and so on. And we still deal with each one on its own. Getting one picture of your entire financial portfolio is not a very common thing.

That’s where Personal Capital wants to come in. The company, which launched last year, provides a suite of software aimed at helping people manage their investments, banking and personal finances — no matter where they are — through one central suite of web and mobile apps. Personal Capital is supported by some real industry weight: Its CEO and founder is Bill Harris, who was the longtime chief exec at Intuit, and thus far the company has taken on $27 million in venture capital funding. Earlier this month Personal Captial was named “Best In Show” at the FinovateSpring, a conference in San Francisco focused on all things financial and technology related, so it certainly seems to be onto something big.

So when Personal Capital put out its first iPhone app last week, we asked Harris and product VP Jim Del Favero to stop by TechCrunch TV and give us a hands-on look at the service. Watch the video above to hear about why it’s a good thing to show your “entire financial life” in one place, how Personal Capital is different from other financial software providers such as Mint and SigFig, why people about to cash in through the Facebook IPO should manage their money in a modern way, and more.