TechCrunch's Michael Arrington has left the popular blog to start a venture capital fund aimed at investing in tech startups. Arrington has partnered with TechCrunch's parent company AOL to raise US$20-million for the new company, CrunchFund, with AOL investing a reported US$10-million in the venture.According to The Wall Street Journal, the project is also backed by "several" other "venture-capital firms". Arrington gave forewarning of such a move back in April of this year, stating that "in a few months, there's ...

WikiLeaks is once more threatening to release a series of uncensored cables following an online poll it is conducting with its Twitter followers.A week prior to the announcement, WikiLeaks published 134 000 US diplomatic cables which contained the names and details of protected individuals.A tweet from the whistleblowing site said:This is in relation to Cablegate, a collection of cables which is seven times the size of the infamous Iraq War Logs. The move to release the cables ...

The XOOM was, of course, the first tablet to run Google's official tablet OS. If you buy it later this month, you'll get it with Honeycomb 3.0, but an immediate upgrade to 3.1 is available, which includes the software necessary to enable the XOOM’s SD card reader.The XOOM has an NVIDIA Tegra 2 1GHz dual-core processor, 1 GB of RAM and a 10.1-inch 1280x800 widescreen HD display. HDMI out allows you to hook the XOOM up to your HDTV and ...

Microsoft has found itself facing a potentially disastrous lawsuit in which it is charged that smartphones running Windows 7 have been illegally tracking user locations.The suit alleges that in a bid to collect information for its location based advertising services, Microsoft chose to use Windows Phones to collect the data. It further alleges that Microsoft did so in disregard of people refusing consent for the process."Microsoft consciously designed its OS [mobile operating system] to siphon geographic location ...

LG Electronics has tied up with Dutch giant Philips and Japan's Sharp to co-operate on the production of interoperable applications for internet-powered televisions. The glaring omission in this consortium are the two TV leaders, Sony and Samsung.The three TV vendors will jointly create software development kits, which will be distributed to third-party developers to write TV applications, said LG.It is the first such collaboration in the smart TV sector, LG said, adding the three would complete software development kits by ...

BlackBerry has released its Official Rugby World Cup 2011 App before the tournament starts on 9 September 2011 in New Zealand. The App will feature live match text commentary and score updates, half time and full time video highlights, tournament news, statistics and much more. This will give fans a chance to stay on top of all the Rugby World Cup 2011 action in real time.BlackBerry says its 'Official App' includes Blackberry-tabulous features such as a native calendar and messaging ...

Sony's first tablet computer will hit the Japanese market on 17 September. The Sony Tablet will be Android powererd. Tablet "S" series with a 9.4-inch (23.8 centimetre) touchscreen display is expected to have a price tag of 45 000 yen (US$580) for a 16-gigabyte data storage model and 53 000 yen for the 32-gigabyte version.The product will also become available in US and European markets later this month, with a price tag of US$499 and 479 euros for the 16-gigabyte ...

Spam is on the decrease, but still accounts for around 76 percent of the world's email traffic. That's according to the latest Symantec Intelligence Report. Symantec is the largest maker of security software for computers.Interestingly, Saudi Arabia tops the list the most spammed countries on Earth, with a spam rate of nearly 85 percent. Russia and China follow the most spammed countries in second and third spot, with spam accounting for more than 80 percent of email traffic.Steven Ambrose, ...

The high-profile disciplinary hearing of ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema has so far reached an astonishing 8 419 565 individuals, "costing" South Africa about US$277 331 in negative publicity. This is the finding of Cape Town-based online Reputation Management Company (ORM), BrandsEye. ORM is the monitoring, engaging and conversion of online brand mentions, it is used to resolve negative brand mentions and maintain a close relationship with consumers/fans/followers.BrandsEye has a tool that puts a costing to the number ...

It's strange how we all get caught up in the Silicon Valley (and Alley) hype.If a company's product fails in the US, it gets punished by the market. Think about RIM's recent BlackBerry woes. Or the fact that Nokia simply doesn't register as a smartphone maker in the world's largest economy.Apple is king. While that may yet change, it's a runaway success in North America, and Europe (and demand in Asia is roaring). Being successful in the "west" (at ...