With the devotion and obsession directed at Steve Jobs, both when he was alive and after his death in October, when it reached a fever pitch, it was inevitable that someone somewhere would create a Steve Jobs action figure. That someone is a company called Inicons, which is offering a super realistic 12-inch tall action…
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Editor’s Note: This is article is a revised version of an article written by Jen Consalvo and Frank Gruber that appears in the January 2012 issue of The Social Media Monthly. If you like this article you might want to download the The Social Media Monthly iPad app or iPhone app and subscribe to get the scoop in 2012….
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Imagine if Amazon did more than just sell you stuff. Imagine that they manufactured and delivered stuff – and competed with other ecommerce sites like Overstock, manufacturers like Sony and Cannon, and shipping companies like FedEx and UPS. It would be a miracle if they excelled at any of those functions. No one outfit could…
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Earlier this we week, we covered the social sharing trends from 2011. The biggest standout theme from AddThis’ data revealed what we had already suspected; 2011 was the year that widescale mobile adoption went from a future prediction to our current reality. With today’s release of the “Mobile Year in Review 2011″ by MobileFuture, this…
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Earlier this year, Nik Bauman was trying to figure out what to do next. He had cofounded artisan food marketplace Foodzie and been named one of Businessweek’s best young tech entrepreneurs of 2009. Should he get a job as a developer or consultant or plunge into another startup? “I look at business like a craft,”…
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It was only a matter of time before Apple’s voice activated assistant, Siri, was hacked. With the help of Applidium, hacker and developer Pete Lamoni (@plamoni) released Siri Proxy on GitHub. It’s a proxy server that allows developers and hackers to create custom functionality for the Apple software. Just a week later, here’s a list…
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Who would have thunk it. Two years ago, Twitter was a punchline to a joke. Five years ago the same could be said for Facebook. Ten years ago, the punchline was MySpace…oh wait, forget that – MySpace will always be a punchline. My point is that social media applications were thought of as mildly entertaining,…
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Here at Tech Cocktail, we like technology. We are lucky that we get to cover a lot of really interesting startups and apps, some of which we adopt and realize we cannot live without. To celebrate Thanksgiving, we thought we’d share with you all the bits of technology we are thankful for, from devices to…
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Microsoft is taking control. Just as Apple stores showcase Apple products better than any other retail outlet, Microsoft is betting that their shiny new storefronts will better engage customers, create fans and move more Microsoft product. Within the past few weeks, the technology giant has had ribbon cutting ceremonies at many locations from California to…
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Google Music, which has been in beta since May, launched yesterday and expanded to a full service for buying, selling, and sharing music. Google touts its new platform as an alternative to music “spinning out of control” on computers, MP3 players, and phones – perhaps a reference to the constant need to sync on iTunes….
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Since leaving Digg back in March, Kevin Rose has been hard at work building his next company – Milk Inc. Milk is a mobile development shop with plans to build a number of applications. The world got its initial preview of Milk’s first application called Oink at the Web 2.0 Summit a few weeks ago….
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Call me a liar if you will, but an app that allows for location-based reminders is something I’ve been clamoring for for a couple of years now. Unfortunately, I never took the time to put it in writing. Now that iOS 5 has allowed for this functionality, it seems that, on the surface, yeah I’m…
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Green technology is making consumer appliances cool again: yesterday, former Apple iPod SVP Tony Fadell unveiled a smart thermostat called Nest. “We [are excited] to reinvent such an important yet unloved device that would make people’s lives easier and hopefully, make the world a little better too,” blogged Fadell, who left Apple in March 2010. He…
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After months of anticipation that even resulted in a lead developer leaving Facebook for Google, Facebook launched the official Facebook iPad application. The app is basically an big upgrade to the current Facebook iPhone app, so if you have that app you just need to get the latest update, which makes everything render differently on the…
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It’s hard to read about Apple’s iPhone event the other day without being confronted with a flood of disappointed customers. Hundreds of case studies have been written that focus on Apple, which is getting kind of annoying – isn’t there another successful company that people can write about as an example? – and its ability to…
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We are saddened to report that Steve Jobs has passed away at 56 years old. As posted on the Apple site: Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world had lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a…
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There are a number of startup accelerator and incubator programs in the United States. We are fans of these programs (not to be confused with... Read More
Two months after the iPad 2 debuted in March, around 40% of users surveyed said their iPad was their primary computer, up from around 30%... Read More
With our Startup Mixology Conference coming up next week followed by our classic Tech Cocktail DC Summer mixer which will showcase a handful of early-stage... Read More
Coming off of one of our biggest Tech Cocktail mixer events in Chicago this past week, which showcased 14 early-stage start-ups, we thought it would... Read More