Can't make up your mind between an iPhone or a Touchwiz? Are you not too proud to sport a knockoff? Do you really, really like smooth jazz? Bring on the Iorgane F9, an update to the knock-off so sour that it just kept popping up again and again, soon available for purchase in 2, 4, and 8GB flavors. The orange-emblazoned F9 (it looks like a fat apple to us) is lovingly demonstrated below with the soothing strains of Kenny Gorelick -- a man better known to elevators around the world under a different name. Take it away, Kenny G...

Continue reading Iorgane's KIRFy F9 soon available, but our hearts will go on

Filed under: Cellphones

Iorgane's KIRFy F9 soon available, but our hearts will go on originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Jul 2009 09:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• WowWee’s Roboscooper picks up the stuff too big for your Roomba
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If you notice this morning that your follower count on Twitter dropped dramatically, don’t be alarmed. It is just Twitter cracking down on spam accounts and bots that automatically follow people. So chances are those weren’t real people anyway.

The drop is a big topic on Twiitter (search for “spam”). This isn’t the first time Twitter has purged spam accounts. What is alarming, however, is that some people affected are complaining that not only did their follower count drop, but that all of their followers and people they followed were wiped out. Oops. That is the same effectively as starting from scratch.

Spam accounts on Twitter are becoming a big problem, inflating follower counts and setting the stage for unwanted commercial come-ons and scams. (And you thought spam on Gmail was bad). As Twitter inches towards becoming a place to do business, it needs to sweep the spammers out of its system. Inevitably, some innocent bystanders will suffer collateral damage.

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You know, this whole "most powerful laptop" game is pretty hilarious. Back in '05, CompAmerica's (who?) Orca 9098 held the title with a cutting-edge 3.8GHz Pentium 4, and over the years, we've watched outfit after outfit pull the award back and forth, much like those tugging games we used to play as tots. Regardless, it seems as if Maingear's down for the fun, today rolling out the planet's all new "world's most powerful gaming laptop" in the eX-L 18, which arrives with an undisclosed Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme processor, twin NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M GPUs, up to 8GB of DDR3 memory, up to three 2.5-inch SATA or SSD drives, an optional Blu-ray drive and a screen that's probably larger than your mother's desktop LCD. And by that, we mean 18.4-inches with a 1,920 x 1,080 resolution. If you're down with lugging around this beast, you can get one headed your way provided you've got at least $2,999 you're willing to see off.

Continue reading Maingear's eX-L 18 grabs for "world's most powerful gaming laptop" title

Filed under: Laptops

Maingear's eX-L 18 grabs for "world's most powerful gaming laptop" title originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Sanyo’s DMX-CG100 and DMX-GH1 camcorders do 1080p up in here
• Panasonic debuts HDC-HS700 and HDC-TM700 1080p camcorders

Human powered search startup ChaCha has been good for so many chuckles over the last few years. One of their investors called them as disruptive as Google, for example. Another time we posted their answer to a question about what time a show in Seattle opened its doors (trust me, you’ll love the answer, which I have also embedded in this post). We’ve just generally picked on this company incessantly - see our posts here, start from the bottom and work up.

So when I saw an email from the company’s PR person this evening, I had high hopes to be entertained. They didn’t let me down.

“ChaCha Funding” read the subject line. One thing this company hasn’t failed at is raising large amounts of cash - maybe as much as $58 million. In the email they ask me if we’d like exclusive funding news, so long as we only talk to them. I said sure but went ahead and looked up the funding filing on the SEC website anyway (they raised $4 million). But the best part was their almost immediate response letting me know that they no longer wanted to talk. This entire exchange, from offer to acceptance to revocation of the offer, took 27 minutes.

So there you have it. ChaCha has raised another $4 million from some investor or investors. Whoever it is, we may never know.

From: “”
Date: July 23, 2009 8:36:28 PM PDT
To: “Michael Arrington”
Subject: RE: ChaCha Funding

ChaCha was informed they cannot make this funding news public in accordance with rules regarding public disclosure. I’m sorry, the company will not be speaking with any media about its filing.

From: Michael Arrington
Sent: Thu 7/23/2009 11:31 PM
To:
Subject: Re: ChaCha Funding

Ok

On Jul 23, 2009, at 8:01 PM, “” wrote:

Today ChaCha filed form D with the SEC, closing additional funding.
I will be able to provide you with more information about this round
EXCLUSIVELY in exchange that TechCrunch only publish news from
sources at ChaCha, as opposed to other third parties.

Would you be interested in receiving the funding news?

Best,

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

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