Foursquare's Dennis Crowley. (Photo: David Brabyn)

The morale at Foursquare is apparently terrible and everyone wants to leave. One person described the startup’s dire situation as “the building is on fire.” [Business Insider]

Here's a think piece about what it means for Google now that Bing is Siri's favorite search engine. [AllThingsD]

The new feature on iOS7 that turns the iPhone into a flashlight is bad news for those apps that claim to do the same thing. One app, which is VC-funded, issued a statement: "We are certainly concerned about this announcement by Apple, as it could affect our core revenue stream." Sure, that's your problem. [TechCrunch]

Sony says the Playstation 4 will cost $399, which is $100 less than the XBox One. Clearly Sony didn't come here to make friends. [Tech Hive]

Just days after launching on Android, Vine is more popular than Instagram on Twitter. [The Verge]

Naturally, the first thing I did after unboxing was fool around with Siri. Had Apple's "intelligent assistant" inched any closer to artificial intelligence since it launched? Turns out, it's still pretty easy to reach the limits of her utility, so the only thing left is to try to find questions that might serve up an Easter egg or human-ish response.  

Judging by a recent job listing, Apple seems to be wise to that mode of interaction. 9to5 Mac found an add for a creative writer who could, "help the Siri team evolve Siri as a distinct, recognizable character."

"We’re looking for a uniquely creative individual to help us evolve and enrich Siri, our virtual personal assistant. Siri’s known for ‘her’ wit, cultural knowledge, and zeal to explain things in engaging, funny, and practical ways. The ideal candidate is someone who combines a love for language, wordplay, and conversation with demonstrated experience in bringing creative content to life within an intense technical environment."

If you really want to amuse users, we might know one writer's room Cupertino should pillage.

I mean, WTF.

Hot on the heels of the rumor that some terrible, unfeeling parents have named their newborn Hashtag comes the news that names from Cupertino are the latest thing. The parenting website BabyCenter has released stats on the popularity of various names among the parents registered on the site, and The Next Web reports that Apple has increased its popularity 15 percent as a girl's name. Siri (apparently a real Norwegian name) increased 5 percent. And among the lads, Mac jumped 12 percent.

Hang on--the littlest Yahoo's name is Macallister, which you'd presumably shorten to Mac. What are you up to, Marissa Mayer?

Assessing this year's results, BabyCenter editor in chief Linda Murray said: "What’s becoming more important to new parents is finding a name with meaning."

Perhaps that's why 50 Shades of Grey exerted even more influence on the list than did Cupertino. (Or, as BabyCenter's press release puts it: "It doesn’t get any hotter than this!") Grey is up 20 percent, Anastasia 10 percent. Ana (which we suppose is her nickname in the series) got a 35-spot bump.

The name Christian, however, actually lost ground. BabyCenter speculates: "While moms are physically attracted to Christian, they do not see him as a role model for their sons." No doubt.

We're just disappointed no one's going with accelerometer.

Basically singing an aria right now. (Photo: Screencap)

Nathan Fillion, hunky star of the beloved-but-taken-too-soon TV series Firefly (and also Castle, we suppose?) appeared on Conan last night. And it seems the main thing he could talk about was how much he loves his iPhone 5.  He loves his iPhone 5 more than you love your mother, spouse and/or labradoodle puppy.

And what's more? That little bundle of chips and Gorilla glass surely loves him back. He gushed to host Conan O'Brien: "It's pretty, it's tiny and it's light and it's so smart and it loves me, obviously it loves me."

Lest you leap to the conclusion that Mr. Fillion's relationship with his Apple devices has been without its rough patches, he admitted to a period of unhappiness with Siri, whom he initially programmed to call him "Scout," which got annoying. However, in the words of the great U2, love is blindness:

"She's not always super accurate and sometimes she's way off, but you know what? I commit to it. Send--whatever she says."

Let's hope he takes a slightly more skeptical approach to whatever he discovers on Apple Maps.

(h/t CNET)

(Photo: Twitter)

Some poor Yahoo employee made a Marissa Mayer Hope poster. We are embarrassed for everyone involved. [Twitter]

Actually, Mitt Romney's face is following you around the Internet--and it's freaking most people out. [New York Times]

"Keep this movement going. Keep this movement tweeting." - A really weird music video by Kim Dotcom that you should watch ASAP. [YouTube]

The Wall Street Journal is confused about who invented the Internet. [Ars Technica]

Martin Scorsese is in Apple's newest star-studded Siri commercial, and naturally it's set in a cab cruising across Manhattan. [9to5 Mac]

(Photo: Google+)

Okay, we confess: We've never owned an iPhone and are head-over-heels in love with our Galaxy Nexus. But even the most hardcore of Apple fanboys have to concede that Google's new Android update, Jelly Bean, looks pretty sweet. Google Now seems like an easy way to seamlessly integrate your phone's functionality into your every day schedule. Plus, the UI tweaks make the whole Android experience much sleeker and prettier.

Oh, but that's not all. Jean-Louis Nguyen, a director of biz dev at GOOG, posted a video (to Google+, of course) of the beta version of Jelly Bean responding to over 40 voice commands. The phone gets it right every damn time. Even obscure requests like, "Where is that museum with Egyptian stuff in San Jose?" It's pretty impressive.

And with the news that Apple's Siri is wrong over a third of the time, Android is looking pretty good right now. Sorry, Zooey.

Meanwhile, over in Mountain View, the geniuses at Google forgot to measure at what temperature the Android Jelly Bean statue would melt. According to Google employee Dan Morrill, "Jelly Bean is so ridiculously hot that the JB statue overheated, and his head partially melted and popped off." That's one way to look at it.

I can has indie cred?

Zooey Deschanel's girlish wiles have been used to hawk everything from cotton to cosmetics in the past. But now Apple is employing the hipster darling to sell you on the notion of upgrading to a robotic assistant on that computer in your pocket. So what if the iPhone 4S doesn't have 4G, did you see those lashes??

While we refuse to believe Ms. Deschanel's apartment is anything but the paragon of DIY domesticity (she uses Siri to remind her to clean), rest of the spot goes for the obvious signifiers of the star's retrograde appeal (i.e. Elvis and all-American comfort food).

If the pink pajamas are a little too precious for you, try the Samuel L. Jackson version. But be warned, rather than asking Siri how get some motherfucking snakes off some motherfucking planes, the commercial opts for depicting the action star in his quest to find organic mushrooms for date night.

via therockstation99x.com

"Siri, find me a lawyer in Cupertino." Over 100 enterprising and quite jaded iPhone 4s users are suing Apple for advertising campaigns that include "misleading and deceptive message."

Represented by law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, Brooklynite Frank M. Fazio is part of a class action suit seeking $5m in damages from the Silicon Valley behemoth. "In the commercials, all of these tasks are done with ease with the assistance of the iPhone 4S’s Siri feature, a represented functionality contrary to the actual operating results and performance of Siri," Mr. Fazio alleges in the lawsuit, filed in California federal court last week.

Mr. Fazio's claim also states that "Siri either did not understand what the Plaintiff was asking, or, after a very long wait time, responded with the wrong answer." He says that if Siri doesn't work, the iPhone 4s is "merely a more expensive iPhone 4."

Sorry, did he think half a grand would buy him a miracle? You mean Siri can't actually help navigate Santa? Or turn a road trip with your significant other from a 3,000 mile long shitstorm on wheels into a lovely bonding experience? For shame!

Who will call me Rock God now?

Check out the full suit document below.

Apple iPhone Siri Cpt

Earlier today, Deadline Hollywood Daily reported that Spike Jonze is set to write and direct a project "about a guy who falls in love with the voice of a computer, similar to the Siri feature on the new iPhone" that would star Joaquin Phoenix, Samantha Morton, Amy Adams and Carey Mulligan. When Deadline reported on the script last March, the story was then "a satire about how world leaders gather to figure out all the seismic events that will take place in the worlds, from oil prices to wars that will be waged."

So either the concept completely changed, they're two different projects, or they're actually the same film, which—if you're familiar with Spike Jonze's repetoir—is entirely possible. Whatever the case may be, here's to Siri—or whatever it's going to be called—joining the ranks of HAL 9000, Joshua, and all the other great/terrible computers actors have talked to over the years.

Hopefully it will be the kind of thing that will make us all seriously consider the manner in which we speak to our phones.

This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder & CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can follow him at @garysguide and reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

Unless you're living under a rock, you know that Apple last week announced its quarterly earnings and the entire tech industry let out a collective gasp and then promptly went into a swoon. Apple's now overtaken Exxon as the world's most valuable company and has almost $100 billion in cash reserves. Thats higher than the market cap of 474 of the S&P 500 companies. Apple's been very careful when it comes to spending its cash. Expect it to continue the trend of locking in a better deal on components in its supply chain boosting its own profit margins and increasing prices (and scarcity) for competitors. Also expect it to snap up important IP that can provide a generational leap to advance core features of its hardware (camera, screen, battery, memory, CPU). Beyond that ('n all the cool wearable computing rumors), one of the things thats imperative for Apple to do (if its not doing it already) is to finally build its own search engine. Here's why.

Google Is Enemy No. 1
Google and Apple started off as best friends with a common enemy, Microsoft. As things become more competitive, that relationship turned into more of a frenemies sort, you know, like Paris and Nicole. That is until Google launched Android, an iPhone/iOS competitor, and a direct shot across Apple's bow even as Google CEO Eric Schmidt was still on the Apple board. To say that Steve Jobs was furious is an understatement. I believe his exact words were "I am willing to go thermonuclear on them" and "spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong".

Google search, maps and video have been tightly integrated into the iOS experience since the very beginning. And I'm sure this can't be making the folks at Apple happy at all. And don't forget, Apple really, really likes having end-to-end control over what goes into its products. Apple has already quietly snapped up mind-blowing 3D map maker C3 Technologies and mapping company Placebase. So an Apple maps offering is inevitable probably in their next major iOS update, and having their own search engine to go hand-in-hand with that seems logical.

Siri
Call it premature or prescient but many are touting Siri as the future of search. We are still in the first version of Siri but it is not difficult to extrapolate how in future versions, as it gets better, it can hook into data from different apps and bring us back exactly what we were searching for without ever going to a search engine. But for now, when Siri doesn't have an answer (which is more often than not) it defaults to Google for search results. Again something that I'm sure Apple is not happy about. Siri also seems to be accumulating and crunching vast amounts of data and this has a direct effect on improving its results. So integrating their own search engine at the back end instead of Google's would be the smart thing for Apple to do.

Google Is Vulnerable
It's no secret that Google search results quality has been deteriorating for a few years now and despite the Panda update they seem to be fighting a losing battle against SEO spam. But they have still been passably good or at least on par with the competition to prevent any mass exodus. But with the recent update of integrating Google+ into their main search results while ignoring data from social competitors Twitter and Facebook and the increasingly prominent placement of Google properties such as Places at the expense of direct competitors like Yelp means that Google has finally gone bat shit crazy and sacrificed their hard earned reputation in search quality for a desperate attempt at jumpstarting Google+ as a reply to Facebook's rising web dominance. Add to that the fact that the Feds are supposedly taking a closer look at it for potential anti-trust violations and the brouhaha over its recent privacy policy changes and you can see how, more so than ever before in its short 15 year history, Google is today vulnerable and ripe for disruption.

Anything That Weakens Android ...
The biggest chunk of Apple's revenues and profits (and the fattest margins), by far, come from iOS products, especially the iPhone, which accounts for over 50% of its revenues. The biggest competitor that the folks at Apple spend sleepless nights over is probably Google's Android. The biggest chunk of Google's revenues (an astounding 97%) comes from search and ads. Google's revenues from Android are minimal. Google has never really had a credible threat to its core bread 'n butter business of search. But if Apple were to throw its weight (and cash) behind launching a search engine, it could have the folks at Google dropping Android 'n Google+ like hot potatoes (or at least putting them on the back burner) and scurrying back and doubling down to protect the moat around their search castle.

Spreading Innovation Across Its Ecosystem
Apple (unlike Google 'n others) doesn't like to spread the peanut butter too thin across too many initiatives. It has historically always focused on keeping its product line simple and streamlined. And in a similar vein, it has always focused on innovating around a few key features with the dual purpose of creating something that is a) disruptive and b) can be rolled out across its ecosystem of products. Examples of this are iOS, touch computing, Airplay, the App store, retina display, thunderbolt and even innovation in design and aesthetics. And I think Siri with a full fledged search engine behind it would be something that Apple would love to eventually integrate across all its products.

Search (And Ads) Are A Big Market
The total online ad spend is expected to reach almost $50 billion by 2015. When you are a company doing the revenues that Apple does, entering any new market means justifying how the potential upside will swing the needle for the company's overall revenues and profits. And we all know Apple is razor focused on generating revenues (and profits) because it knows thats what gives it the buffer to innovate. And television and search seem the two most likely big markets adjacent to Apple's current offerings that it could turn to next. iAds may not have taken off but it showed that Apple was interested and I'm positive it wants to take another swing at it. ^[1]

Mobile First
According to a recent Comscore report, Google has around 65 percent market share in web search. But a big chunk of that is desktop and laptop search. Mobile is a whole different ball game and one that is very much up for grabs. iOS and Android may be fighting it out in terms of share of installations but when it comes to actual usage and traffic, its no contest. iOS has the lion's share of around 58.5 percent of all mobile traffic (including a whopping 97.2% of all tablet traffic) while Android only accounts for 31.9 percent. Add to that the fact that mobile as a percent of overall web traffic is rising very rapidly (now almost 7%) and that mobile (iOS) is central to Apple's products, dominance and revenues, and it makes sense for Apple to take a shot at mobile search.

The Twitter Firehose
When Apple launched Ping (its feeble attempt at a social network), it initially turned to Facebook. But the two couldn't quite work things out. Fast forward a couple of years, and Apple now has Twitter deeply integrated into iOS. If Apple were to launch its own search engine, integrating the Twitter firehose into its results could give it an instant advantage over Google (who couldn't come to terms with Twitter on a deal).

The Apple Brand And Its Halo Effect
The Apple brand has never been stronger, more trusted, more beloved and with a universal appeal on a global scale as it is today (despite what all the fandroids will have u know ;)). And it is very much associated with innovation. There is a reason why the tech world waits with bated breath to see what Apple will announce next. It has earned that reputation. Which means that unlike Microsoft trying to push Bing by throwing around big marketing dollars, if Apple were to launch a new search engine it won't have to do much of a hard sell. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is going to take it for a spin. After that it will have to stand on its own merit, and if its a clunker like Ping, it will tell. ^[2]

And Finally ... The Gang Of Four
Last year, at the AllThingsD conference, then Google CEO Eric Schmidt made an interesting observation about the ominous sounding 'Gang of Four' that are dominant in the tech ecosystem today - Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook - and how each of them is rapidly encroaching into each others businesses. There was a time when you equated Google with search, Facebook with social and Amazon with e-commerce. Not any more. With Google snapping up phone manufacturer Motorola, Facebook contemplating its own mobile phone (and a rumored search engine) once it clears the IPO fence and Amazon aggressively rolling out wannabe iPad competitor Kindle Fire, it would be foolish for Apple to take the risk of having any aspect of its business model too highly dependent on any of them.

Its like Muhammed Ali, Joe Frazier, Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson are all in the ring at the same time. The gloves are off and the battle for tech supremacy is on. This is no time to pull the punches. This is time for war.

[1] Apple doesn't enter a new market just because they can or because it has potential upside for revenues & profits. They have shown remarkable discipline of only entering markets where they can a) disrupt the status quo with a quantum leap of innovation b) leverage and strengthen its existing ecosystem of products. Search + Siri might be just that ticket.

[2] The failure of Ping (and lukewarm reception of iCloud precursor MobileMe) drives home the fact that not everything Apple touches turns into gold, especially when its a little bit outside their comfort zone. Hence an acquisition of a company such as DuckDuckGo, Blekko or even Twitter might make a lot of sense. Heck if Apple bought Twitter AND Square (not an impossible scenario), that might mean Jack Dorsey going to Apple and being groomed as a potential Steve Jobs heir apparent. Now THAT would be interesting.