Industry news

Looking for a food cart in Portland, Ore.? There's probably one right in front of you. But maybe there's one up the street that's better. Now you can find out such things with a new mapping layer from Microsoft for its Bing Maps service.

Having grown up in Portland, I can tell you that most locals know where the best carts are, along with the food item to get at those places. But one thing the locals won't always be able to tell you is the location of the traveling food carts--the ones that are not … Read more

iPhone and iPad users who have longed to get the same functionality found in Google's "Chrome to Phone" extension, which sends items from the browser to the mobile phone, need wait no longer.

A new extension from developer Tom Lerendu called Chrome to iPhone brings a similar level of convenience to users who wish to send links directly to their phones. Users with the extension installed can send whatever page they're looking at in Chrome to their iPhone. Though unlike on a compatible Android device, these links or application shortcuts don't automatically fire up the … Read more

According to reports, the latest game in the Halo series, which isn't due for release until next month, has already been downloaded early--and from all places, Microsoft's own Xbox Live Marketplace.

Joystiq reports that members of the game-modifying enthusiast site Game-Tuts.com were able to circumvent Microsoft's download key system to download fully licensed copies of the game to their Xbox 360 hard drive. Microsoft had made the full game available to reviewers as a download earlier in the week, though had put in a security measure that would only allow it to be accessed with an … Read more

Voice navigation is now commonplace on modern-day Android devices, but on the desktop, many of the accessibility tools that would bring voice commands to the end user still require special system level software or customized hardware.

That's not the case with a new Firefox add-on called Firesay, which brings hands-free voice controls to just the browser. Once installed as an add-on, it can pick up voice commands to do Web searches, open and close sites, and even pull up TV shows on Hulu.

The number of commands, and sites users can visit is extremely limited for the time being. … Read more

It didn't cost quite as much as the wallet-emptying $2.6 million that Pizza.com sold for back in 2008, but as of Wednesday evening, the domain Tshirts.com has a new owner.

Among the 934 domains up for grabs at domain auction company Moniker's live auction as part of the DOMAINfest conference in New York, just 19 were sold, including Tshirts.com, which fetched $1.265 million and included a handful of related domains like T-shirts.com and T-shirt.com. Following that was Disco.com, which sold for $255,000 and BigApple.com for a modest $70,… Read more

Cross-platform social-gaming network OpenFeint is bringing out on Wednesday a new version of its service with a new invite system and time-based leaderboards.

Gamers running titles with version 2.6 of OpenFeint will be able to share a title they're playing from within the app, just as Apple does via e-mail from within the App Store and as competitor Plus+ does via its internetwork messaging system. New to OpenFeint is a way to send recommended games out as an SMS to a friend. These are sent not from your phone or game device, but from OpenFeint itself, meaning that … Read more

Yahoo has rejiggered its Web e-mail service to better fit within the confines of the iPad's plus-size Web browser.

Users who visit Yahoo's Web mail service from their iPad will now get a version of the site that's been designed to fit in with the iPad's user interface aesthetic. This includes portrait and landscape support and scrolling up and down one's message list and messages themselves with acceleration.

As far as extra bells and whistles over the native iPad e-mail client, there aren't many. You cannot, for instance, attach a signature, photo, or video … Read more

If you were hoping to see HBO's content show up on Netflix's streaming service, things aren't looking too good for you.

In an interview with Bloomberg, HBO Co-President Eric Kessler went on the record as saying "there is a value in exclusivity," and that people would "pay a premium" for it.

That exclusivity comes in the form of HBO's own online streaming service called HBO Go, which the company launched in February.

Unlike Netflix and competitor Redbox, which are having to wait nearly a month to release some new films via their … Read more

Twitter will reportedly soon get its own external sharing tool that will help both users and publishers share content on the popular social publishing platform.

Based on internal company documents, blog Mashable on Wednesday unearthed details on the "Tweet Button" program, which centers on an embeddable sharing button. When put on third-party sites, it will allow users to share whatever content they're looking at, while it keeps track of how many times that particular URL has been retweeted by other Twitter users.

Sound familiar? If you look at the top of this post, you'll see that … Read more