Category: Switched Video

When Google launched the Nexus One way back in January, the smartphone was supposed to be a serious contender against the iPhone, and was expected to serve as exemplar of the Android handset. By circumventing the carriers' brick-and-mortar stores, Google also hoped to usher in a new era in cell phone sales; however, it appears to have doomed itself to obscurity, instead. With no presence in ...

Quite frequently we hit the streets of New York City to ask random passersby if they can identify the latest gadget, app or Web site, but we don't think we've ever seen our subjects as stymied as they were when trying to identify Foursquare. Most simply shrugged their shoulders, and one poor person even thought we were giving them a math quiz. In the end, we were only able to find one urbanite ...

Tech companies have the unbecoming habit of giving their newest gizmos misleadingly awesome names. Perhaps the most guilty party is Google, with its mobile operating system Android. While Android is perhaps one of the few viable competitors to Apple's iOS, which powers the iPhone, having a G-juiced smartphone in your pocket is not nearly as cool as having R2-D2 by your side. That being the case, ...

If, a year or two ago, you'd asked us what FarmVille was, we'd have said we were pretty sure that it was a small college town in southwest Indiana. We would, of course, have been wrong, but we sort of wish that we would've been right. 'FarmVille,' after all, has managed to dominate our Facebook feeds, telling us of our friends and family who trade cyber-cattle for cyber-corn, build e-barns and ...

We hit the streets to see how effectively Palm is getting its WebOS-based Palm Pre out there into the world. Perhaps it's the fault of some horrific advertising campaigns (e.g., the creepy 'New Age meets Renaissance Fair' wench, those painfully unfunny Verizon spots), but Palm's next-generation smartphone didn't get much recognition on the streets. Here's hoping HP can make Palm into a real ...

Not too long ago, we dropped by Times Square to test the crowd's knowledge of Web browsers. Surfin' the tubes has come a long way since the early days of Mosaic, and modern browsers can play games, movies and all types of other media. They've even left the constraints of the desktop to leap onto mobile devices. Although Mozilla Firefox offers countless improvements over that old standby Internet ...

Share As bloggers, we were heartened to know that most of the people we asked in Times Square actually did know what a blog is. One man was quite fervently opposed to blogs, saying that he had never sought one out himself. (But we're willing to bet he's read one -- and now he's even being featured on one. Bam!) We'll just pretend that all of the negative comments about blogs were directed at ...

Share We understand that Apple's brand-name recognition stretches from one hemisphere to the next, and that competitors face a nigh-impossible task of out-marketing the Cupertino giant. But, still, we expected at least a few people to get this one. Considering all the fanfare with which Microsoft released the Zune HD late last year, we'd have wagered that at least someone in the New York area ...

Since its launch in 2004, the video-sharing site Vimeo has chosen a very different path from the YouTubes and Hulus of the world. Cleaner and calmer, Vimeo puts its focus on ease of use, creativity and community. We dropped by its headquarters in New York City to speak with Blake Whitman, Director of Community and Product, about the site and its role in nurturing the explosion of HD content on ...

digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2010/03/30/high-tech-toys-in-babeland-inside-a-sex-shop-for-the-21st-centu/'; Spending a morning in Babeland, one of the country's most forward-thinking, pro-sex (and pro-women) toy shops, is one of those moments that simply makes us love our jobs. Sure, we got to squeal at the Skweel, and get our finger, er, caressed by the Tenga Flip (better than, say, a ...

Fresh off the plane from the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco, Peter Molyneux sat down, er, took a walk with Switched at South by Southwest in Austin to chat about the roles of emotion, morality, and a sense of touch in gaming. With news of 'Fable 3,' the latest installment of his adventure-based RPG series, Molyneux was brimming with thoughts on the PlayStation Move, social gaming, ...

digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2010/02/18/ny-fashion-week-how-alexander-wang-streams-live-from-the-runway/'; Share Fashion, an industry known for its insider-filled snobbery, resistance to change and frankly undemocratic practices, has finally joined the 21st century. Last year, when the average person thought Twitter was the sound of a small bird, the only people to get a glimpse of New ...

We dropped by New York City's Quest 2 Learn school to check out Parsons the New School for Design's SMALLab-New York initiative. Institute of Play director and Parsons professor Katie Salen, known for her animation work in Richard Linklater's 'Waking Life,' is the project's capable captain, and we also spoke with Mike Edwards, co-instructor of Parsons' Exploding SMALLab course. Similar to ...

We weren't surprised to see Ron Jeremy in Vegas -- after all, the Adult Entertainment Expo was just down the road -- but we were taken aback to find him and his massive... personality on the CES floor. Matched against emo-haired "porn pastor" Craig Gross, Jeremy entered into The Great Porn Debate to discuss the role of skin flicks in society and the necessity of Internet filters for preventing ...

Plowing through booth after booth in search of the best new gadgets, apps, and tech at CES always results in finding a few clunkers. We've got our list (coming soon), of course, but we decided to take the question of the worst to the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Frequently mentioned was 3-D TV, which seems to be splitting attendees; many listed it as a product they'd be buying in the ...