WWIV, Wildcat, Celerity — these hallowed names represent the best of a golden era of communication, back when “getting online” meant tying up the family phone line, remembering arcane Hayes AT codes to maximize performance out of the 9600 baud modem your dad borrowed from work, and...

By Chris Scott Barr If you haven’t hopped on the Blu-ray bandwagon, it’s becoming easier and easier. Heck, the last two Blu-ray movies I bought also came with a DVD copy as well. Blu-ray players themselves have long since broken the sub-$200 barrier, and now you can even get yourself one...

By Andrew Liszewski In the past I’ve questioned the need for a standalone calculator since these days everything from computers to phones to watches already has one built-in. But here’s one instance where I think they could still come in useful. I know the last thing I want to do when cooking...

SFWeekly Web Editor Alexia Tsotsis (not pictured left) spent some time early this morning trying out Chatroulette , a website that connects random strangers for a video chat. The results are unlikely to surprise you. Unless you are new to this whole Internet thing. Screen shots of some of her more entertaining...

By Chris Scott Barr You know how your parents and grandparents always told you how much better you had it than they did as kids? I’m still in my 20’s and I’m already thinking those exact same things. For instance, when I rode the bus to school I generally just read books. Eventually...

One thing we love around here at TechCrunch is data. And since we’re busy looking up our own traffic stats for 2009, we thought we might as well share those stats with everyone. Total unique visitors across all TechCrunch sites in 2009, according to Google Analytics, were 69,482,978, up 55% from...

Ever since I upgraded my beloved Chrome browser to version 5 on my (Windows) computer, I’ve been wanting to get something off my chest about a new feature that was baked into it, one that annoys me to no end. With the update to the most recent version of the program came an integration with Google...

Google Chrome and Firefox both throw up a malware warning for AOL’s Chinese portal (click at your own risk), and Google even warns people who run a search for ‘AOL China’ that the site may harm their computer, as you can tell from the screenshot above. As far as I can tell, Internet...

Google has recently been making a lot of waves with regard to Internet speed. Last June, the company posted a blog post detailing its need for speed . And yesterday it announced plans to deploy a fiber-optic 1Gb/sec network to a limited number of customers to explore what kind of services could be built...

When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad last month, one notable potential partner absent from the stage was Hulu , now the second-largest video site on the Web. The launch event focussed more on the iPad as an eBook reader to rival the Kindle , but watching videos on it will be just as important. The TV shows...

Linus Torvalds , the inventor of the Linux kernel, has an absolute disdain for mobile phones. All of the ones he has purchased in the past, the man writes on his personal blog, ended up being “mostly used for playing Galaga and Solitaire on long flights” even though they were naturally all...

( Editor’s note : Centralized Web job boards are in decline. Dan Finnigan , CEO of Jobvite , explains why in this guest post. Previously, he was Senior VP at Yahoo and GM of HotJobs, and before that a Director on CareerBuilder’s Board as CEO of Knight Ridder Digital. Monster’s acquisition...