Biggs is the East Coast Editor of TechCrunch.
Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at john@techcrunch.com.
In one of the oddest cases of an April Fool’s joke coming true, Digitimes is reporting that Foxconn is looking at opening LCD TV plants in LA or Detroit. These plants will focus on automated production lines and build mostly LCD TVs as too much hand-work is required to assemble more complex mobile electronics. → Read More
High-tech watches are, arguably, a dime-a-dozen. But the Division Furtive electro-mechanical watch is something special. Built using a series of Swiss micro-motors (or LEDs), the face displays the time by moving little indicators along a sliding scale. You can see the day, date, time, day of week, time zone, phase of the moon, and a chronometer (along with a battery indicator) on a face that looks… → Read More
Getting an iPhone in China has always been hard. For most of its life-cycle, the phone has been unavailable in the Mainland except through the grey market. Now that Apple is allowed to sell units in Shenzhen, however, it’s gotten amazingly strict on sales per-person. → Read More
Back in high school when I worked at Arby’s, I was very careful to punch in and out using an old, mechanical time clock. Now, however, I suspect I’d use something ShiftHub. This app, by a pair of charming Torontians (Torundians?) who have experience in retail, branding, and mobile, is an all-in-one system for throwing away time clocks altogether. → Read More
In case you didn’t hear the deafening roar coming from Comerica Park, this is a reminder that the Detroit TechCrunch Meetup is tonight. → Read More
Researchers at Georgia Tech have created a robotic dragonfly that can hover, dive, and climb like a real insect. With the help of a $1,000,000 grant from the Air Force, the team has built multiple prototypes of the consumer device and is now working on an Indiegogo project to sell the basic dragonfly for $99 and an upgraded version for $179. The ultimate version will cost $399 although they expect… → Read More
In 1987, as the first reduced instruction set computing (RISC) ARM chips hit the scene, programmers at Acorn Computers created RISC OS, a simple, ‘co-operatively multi-tasked’ OS designed for small computing environments. While it’s no Linux, it’s still a great way to get to know RISC computing and, more important, it boots fast and has a working GUI. Now, according to a post on Rasberrypi.org… → Read More
As a major media figure on the Internet, I often find it difficult to manage all of my content outlets. I have a Twitter feed connected to my Facebook connected to my Tumblr. I also have a personal blog that I ignore and a few other things I shouldn’t ignore. The problem, then, is how to curate and post content I’d like to share almost everywhere at once or, barring that, focus in on one content… → Read More
On a crisp, sunny Sunday morning here in Brooklyn it’s hard to imagine that devastation is just around the corner. Whole communities are burnt and swept to sea. Endless gas lines and power outages abound. The arteries and capillaries that carried the lifeblood of this city – its myriad people and their trains – are choked off. It’s getting better, but it’s not there yet. → Read More
Originally a Kickstarter project, Ubi is a ubiquitous computing device. Designed to plug into your wall and remain dormant until you talk to it, this little computer can perform searches, wake you up, and even sense environmental conditions in every room. → Read More
In a cool report by the Georgian Government, Georgian CERT researchers claim to have nabbed a hacker by infecting his PC with malware and tracking him down by grabbing his files, photographs, and even viewing him at work. The hacker ran the Georbot Botnet, a botnet designed to spy specifically on Georgian citizens. → Read More
The founders of LitPick have known each other since birth. Seth Cassel and his dad Gary founded their first company, FlamingNet in 2002 when Seth was in fourth grade. Designed as a book review site, Seth and his dad Gary built the site themselves and began taking a profit. → Read More
As a scientist practicing actual, bona fide science, I have often found myself in need of immediate g-force readings or barometric pressure analyses for my scientific problems. Whereas before I had to use my sextant and trident and thermowhozzit, I can instead use the Node. → Read More
Hello, Great White North! We are officially out of tickets for the Northern Meet-ups, our flights and hotels are booked, and we’re raring to meet all of you in Toronto, Detroit, and Chicago. For more information head over to the individual event pages (Detroit, Chicago, and Toronto) if you’ve signed up be sure to show up early because we’re expecting a packed house at each one. → Read More
The story sounded far-fetched: OLPC researchers, working with a team of technicians in Ethiopia, created a special “hut” covered in solar panels where the children of a few distant towns could go to recharge some toys they were given. The toys were boxed Motorola Xoom tablets and every child between the age of four and eight got one. The researchers were expecting the children to play with the… → Read More
While I’m loath to point to certified Apple nerds like Marco Arment and Gruber in regards to Windows Surface (in this case the RT edition) I think it’s important that we all take a step back and assess what really happened: Microsoft rushed to market with a product that was, at best, shoddy. → Read More
If you know me, you know two things about me: I love watches and I smell, faintly, of ferret. That’s why I’d like to share my excitement at this review of the new Seiko SRP313K1 “Orange Monster,” one of the nicest and least expensive automatic diving watches you can buy. → Read More
Tiggly is a toy for kids who might be past the “teethe on your iPad” and just below the “I want to play the birds game” stages of mental development. Designed by a parent, Steve Miller of Cambridge, MA, the system includes three little shapes and a set of apps that allow kids to interact with shapes, colors, and animals on the screen. → Read More
Cyril Ebersweiler has launched one of the coolest incubators I’ve seen in a while. Based in Dalian, China, the incubator has already run one group through the ringer, and now they’re looking for hardware hackers to join them in their second round. This time, however, they’re doing it up nice. → Read More
Researchers from the Korean Institute of Science and Technology’s Center for Intelligent Robotics (CIR) have been working on a robot named CIROS to help around the house. Earlier versions were fairly life-like but this third-generation model, able to cut cucumbers and pour salad dressing, is positively Julia-Child-like. → Read More
We’ve had such a great response and such persistent requests for additional tickets to the Northern Meetups that we’ve decided to release some more. While about 800 of ya’ll will be able to hang out with us, all at the same time, we’re gonna give a few more tickets and let folks in on a 1-in-1-out basis. So grab a ticket and come on down early so you can be one of the first 800 folks in… → Read More
In the endless back and forth between Amazon and B&N, the consumers are the lucky ones. Each product in the Nook and Kindle family have been consistently better and more compelling than the last.
The Nook HD is Barnes & Noble’s latest entry in the great sub-$200 tablet race and barring a few hardware issues associated with this sort of underpowered hardware I’m glad to report that the… → Read More
Google likes to skate to where the puck might be next game. They were first in the U.S. with a viable NFC payments solution (that isn’t very popular) and they’ve been at the forefront of AR with Glass (which is too expensive for the average consumer) and now they’re one of the first to market with a wireless charging solution for the Nexus 4. → Read More
Two lads from Ghent University in Belgium, Karel Bruneel and Benjamin Schrauwen, got tired of the traditional tools used to build electronics manufacturing. Rather than rage silently at their breadboards, the created Circuits.io, a website that lets you create circuits in Chrome and view the rendered PCB. → Read More
When Google announced the Nexus 4 and the Nexus 10, they neglected to mention specific specifications for folks who specifically wanted them. Luckily, we just got our hands on a nice, complete list. As we noted, the N10 has a 5MP front camera and 1.9MP back camera and 2GB RAM. It’s running a Dual-core A15 Eagle processor and runs for up to 500 hours on standby. → Read More
As we previously suspected, the Nexus 10 just launched on Google’s blog, confirming what we knew about this 10.1-inch AMOLED device made by Samsung to Google’s specifications. The new device runs a 1.7GHz processor with 2GB RAM. It has a screen density of 2560×1600 pixels which is a bit higher than Apple’s 2048×1536 iPad display. → Read More
“Delivering parcels in the trunk of a car is new concept,” said Cardrops co-founder Nick De Mey in what may be one of the finest examples of understatement in recent history. His startup sounds simple: you order something and it’s left in the boot of your car. However, when you consider the ramifications – that your car can tell people where it is, that you’re going to be getting shoes or a… → Read More
We’re living in a pre-barbaric age. Gutenberg and the printed word cast out the darkness of a hundred mistakes, a thousand benighted cities hastened from the gloom, a million lights winked on in a million windows. The word, once hidden in the chests of the mind, was now scratched onto paper and carefully typeset into folios. The barbarians were cast out, fleeing ahead of the coming enlightenment. → Read More
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is planning for a future when 3D printing, thanks to “creative” patents, could no longer be free. Because the technology is so nascent, patenting parts of the process or renewing expiring patents could prevent incremental improvement of the technology out of fear or patent infringement. The EFF wants to head this off at the pass. → Read More
In the great, wide world of journalism, games journalism is a weird animal. Those who “practice” – and practice it well – face a barrage of PR perks, free trips, and angry houses. Access is given and taken away by marketing folks on a whim. There are a few great news sources (Polygon is one as is Rock, Paper, Shotgun), a few silly ones, and a few horrible ones. But on the whole, not many folks… → Read More
