Yes, they are still around and today Bandai announced in Japan [JP] their Tamagotchis are soon even going color. The virtual pet toys became instant worldwide hits, selling around 75 million units between their debut in 1996 and today. Tamagotchis still must be fed, nurtured and played with by pushing buttons, or else they will die [...]

Teach your fish tricks, make friends Lighter doubles as an 8GB flash drive Why not, DIY edition: Turn your iPhone into a fishing lure Solve your girl problems with DIY Smart Coasters Party Rats, the ultimate accessory for dancing poorly

Everyone was hoping the fabled “Black Gold” Nikon would be some kind of awesome upgrade package. If these pictures aren’t faked (and why would you deface your camera thus?), it appears that “Black Gold” is really just a fabulously ugly $50 trim option for your D60. I don’t know if they’re trying to capture the crucial [...]

Toshiba Japan has developed an LED that emits UV light with 50% higher efficiency than conventional LEDs. The problem with existing white LEDs is that they are made by coating phosphors on blue LEDs and too weak to light bigger areas such as parking lots or supermarkets. Toshiba says their prototype UV LED is made by [...]

As it turns out, that shiny new chrome and silver Q9h we wrote about back in August brings more to the table than just a new paint job. At AT&T’s request, the silver Q9h Global has gained support for push over-the-air firmware updates, allowing deeply rooted system elements to be patched with very little effort from [...]

To the girl who almost slammed into me as she was texting away on her phone while driving last week: regardless of the crazy face you made and the nasty words you mouthed through your windshield, that was your fault. California agrees with me. Just yesterday, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation outlawing the reading [...]

The design studio of Art Lebedev, perhaps most well known for their pocket-melting Optimus OLED keyboard, has been working on some WiMax handset concepts for Scartel, a Russian wireless carrier with plans to blanket Moscow and St Petersburg in WiMax coverage by the end of 2008. Though it’s likely little more than an idea at this [...]

Be sure to visit the home of the Energy Retards - See how stupid they can be!

Sarah Lacy, the author of the book ?Once You?re Lucky, Twice You?re Good,? is thinking of doing a book tour. Start things off here in Atherton, Sarah. I’ll do the first one at my house. See my interview with Sarah on the new book here.

The ETA may or may not have a legitimate goal in demanding Basque independence, but bombing a building full of journalists is no way to win karma points or influence people.

I already picked one blog fight today. So on the other issue, I’m going with what Mathew Ingram said.

TV advertising doesn't have to be just on TV. That's the premise behind BlackArrow, a startup that caters to the cable industry by offering a way to place ads on broadband Web video, on-demand TV, and digital-video recorders (with unskippable ads). The company is announcing a new $20 million round of funding from existing investors Cisco Systems., Comcast Interactive Capital, Intel Capital, Mayfield Fund and Polaris Venture Partners. BlackArrow lets cable companies and TV networks show the same ads on the Web and on other platforms as they do on TV, making it easier to do bundled sales.

It took iTunes nearly three years to get to 1 billion song downloads. MySpace Music streamed a billion songs in just a few days after it launched on September 25. And while this isn't a fair comparison (songs on MySpace are free to stream; on iTunes users were paying $0.99 each), it's an incredible milestone. What MySpace won't say for some reason is what the billionth song was, or when exactly it was streamed (which would be nice for trivia purposes). But they are confirming that the billionth stream was initiated sometime last week, just a few days after launch. They are also issuing a rather convoluted statement:

This is an urgent message for anyone who was attending or speaking at Virtual Worlds Forum in London this week. The whole thing is going to be re-scheduled due to an incident on Sunday at the venue in which a member of the public was shot. The venue was to be “The Bridge” in London [...]

Only three months after the British newspaper publisher The Guardian Group bought Rafat Ali's ContentNext Media and his collection of blogs for a reported $30 million, one of those blogs is sputtering badly. The blog in question is contentSutra, the Indian counterpart to its bigger and better known brother, paidContent (both cover the business of digital media). Until recently, contentSutra was ContentNext's second biggest blog, even beating out mocoNews. But if you look at it now, traffic has dropped off a cliff. Posts are sporadic, and mostly consist of news roundups or the occasional post from the editors at paidContent. ContentNext and the Guardian are currently in talks with media companies in India for possible syndication and cross-promotion deals. Rumors are going around that ContentNext has been in talks with HT Media (publisher of the Hindustan Times), 9.9 Media, and others. We also received an unconfirmed tip that the Guardian is trying to unload contentSutra all together, but Rafat Ali says that is not true. In any event, the site is not doing as well as it once did. The editor who built up contentSutra for two years, Nikhil Pahwa, left at the end of May, and launched his own competing blog, Medianama, a month later on June 27.

Did someone declare that startups would have a hard time raising money? Not for some of them. Paris Based Inspirational Stores will announce tomorrow a 10 million euros series B lead by Atlas Ventures and OTC asset Management. Inspirational Stores offers famous high-end brands without online retail activity a full turn-key solution to give them a second life on the web starting from web presence to full logistical and customer support service.

In recognition of the tough economic times we’re facing, and the fact that lots of startups are looking for people right now, I’m - perhaps naively? - going to have a go at kick-starting the market. But the “market” we are in is not just about jobs. It’s about office space. It’s about trying to [...]

It looks like Monday will be when we find out if how many staff go from eBay’s offices globally and the UK/European offices specifically. Last month reports started to emerge that eBay was poised to cut 1,500 jobs, or 10% of its workforce globally, according to an article in Barron’s weekly. It cited a report [...]

The shifting sands of London’s networking events is shifting again, and re-shaping into something approaching stability. The Social Media Cafe, or The Tuttle Club as regulars like to call it, is moving from its birthplace in an upstairs room in The Coach and Horse pub in London’s Soho (see my bad photo of the last [...]