hot

A day seen through Google searches

Google likes to think of itself as the world's information barometer, the most complete repository of human intent as measured by the Internet search query. Around every hour it updates a list of the queries it has determined are spiking disproportionately due to breaking news, seasonal holidays, or pop culture phenomena.

Google has recently started to promote this list more prominently than in the past, with a weekly Google Beat YouTube series and frequent references to trending topics on its official blog. But how does something become a trend on Google? We spent yesterday monitoring the U.S. version … Read more

The Silly Putty age of social media

For something that seems very rudimentary in a world of iPhone apps and fancy smartphone operating systems, text-messaging services were getting a whole lot of love at October's edition of the monthly New York Tech Meetup.

Along with about a dozen other start-ups eager to pitch the audience of potential partners, investors, and advisers, two back-to-back presentations from new companies called GroupMe and Fast Society showed off different takes on the same basic concept of group text messaging.

They have extremely similar premises. Both GroupMe and Fast Society require a single user with an iPhone (or also, in GroupMe'… Read more

Toaster oven rolls into hot dog territory

Toaster ovens are fantastic machines that are capable of cooking practically anything. Like a magic box, food of all shapes and sizes gets put in to it, becoming fully cooked and ready to eat when removed. Recent years have seen toaster ovens advance into secondary oven territory, with new features and designs allowing for the countertop appliances to be used to cook everything from 12-inch pizzas to fried eggs. It is now entirely possible to bypass the large oven and create full homemade meals by using just the one appliance. Of course, when shopping for one it doesn't hurt … Read more

Ballooning to the top

Flight Doodle is a simple, fun, and extremely polished casual flying game in which you pilot a hot-air balloon through endless hazards to ever-increasing heights.

The interface is simple: you use tilt controls (tilting your device left and right, with adjustable sensitivity) to steer a hot-air balloon up an infinitely scrolling vertical skyscape; you can use touch-screen buttons on the left to slow down, speed up, or get a temporary boost. You face an inexhaustible supply of enemies that threaten to pop your balloon and end your game--including rock-throwing cloud men and pointy thumbtacks that materialize at the edge of … Read more

Yet another Facebook unveiling this week

Facebook sent out e-mail invitations to Bay Area reporters and bloggers on Monday evening to announce an event at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time Wednesday at its Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters. The wording is vague: "Join Us for an Event."

It probably isn't a celebration of the fact that "The Social Network," the ambiguously fictionalized film retelling of Facebook's contested origins, was tops at the U.S. box office this weekend.

The massive social-networking company has been launching an unusually heavy number of product initiatives in the past few months, from a gaming notifications overhaul … Read more

Hybrid solar system for heat and electricity funded

PVT Solar is entering the solar-panel market with a twist: its system generates electricity as well as heat.

The San Francisco area-based start-up today said that it has raised a series B round of $13.7 million from Sigma Partners and named a former SunPower executive, Vikas Desai, as CEO. The money will be used to expand the company's operations, including sales and distribution.

Price competition in the global business for solar photovoltaic modules is brutal, with prices for panels falling steadily. PVT Solar is seeking to differentiate itself with multipurpose modules that produce electricity and harvest the heat … Read more

Hot Wheels makes RC cars pocketable

The Hot Wheels I grew up with were die-cast, detailed replicas of actual cars or outrageously exaggerated hot rods, running down orange plastic tracks snapped together in any configuration I could imagine. The two latest Hot Wheels sitting on my desk are plastic, fold flat so they can fit into an iPhone-size carrying case, and require neither gravity nor muscle power to move.

Stealth Rides are Hot Wheels' latest remote controlled cars, with the unique feature of stowing away into their own remote controllers. The company designed them so that boys, its major demographic, can easily carry them around and play with them.

Currently, Stealth Rides come as either a race car or a treaded crawler, with a Batman Tumbler available in October. … Read more

Monster swallows HotJobs, inks deal with Yahoo

Monster Worldwide has completed its acquisition of Yahoo's HotJobs for $225 million in cash and has sealed a three-year deal as Yahoo's exclusive provider of job and career content, the companies said Tuesday.

Although Monster already claims the title as the leading online job site, the addition of HotJobs to its resume is part of the company's drive to match up more working professionals with its business customers. The deal with Yahoo will place Monster on Yahoo's home page in both the U.S. and Canada.

With HotJobs, Monster said it expects to now reach about … Read more

Hot Potato officially lands in Facebook's lap

Hot Potato, an online "check-in" service that lets users report their whereabouts and activities to friends, announced on Friday that it had been acquired by social-networking behemoth Facebook.

The deal, which has been talked about for several weeks, is the most recent development in Facebook's efforts to juice up the location-based aspect of its hugely popular service, which lets people connect with friends and family via the Web and share thoughts, links, photos, and more.

On Wednesday, Facebook unveiled Places, a feature that enables Facebook account holders to advertise their current location to friends, and lets users … Read more