The age old problem of putting batteries into electronics the wrong way is about to end if Microsoft has its way. The Redmond company on Thursday introduced InstaLoad, a technology aimed at making electronics work whichever way the battery is inserted.

Battery-maker Duracell has already endorsed the system, although the technology would not affect the way a battery is made -- more how the electronics are manufactured. It would work with CR123, AA, AAA, C, and D batteries, the company says.

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TechCrunch is reporting this afternoon that iPhone OS game developer Tapulous has been acquired by Disney, and the team of developers and executives at the startup will join the staff at Disney Interactive Studios.

Tapulous has released a slew of rhythm games in the vein of Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution, which began in 2008 with "Tap Tap Revenge." That title went on to be the most downloaded game in the app store that year, and was later ranked "game of the year" for the iPhone/iPod platform. Since that time, the company has released some 14 different versions of the game for iOS ranging in price from $0-$3.99.

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Hooking up Android's email client to a Yahoo! account was not typically a simple affair. With Gmail and Windows Live Hotmail, you could just type in your email address and password, and the Android client would set it up for you. Yahoo mailboxes could be hooked up, but only through manual setup, and casual users unfamiliar with incoming and outgoing server settings often hit a brick wall.

As the resident "Android guy" of my peers, I've had to set up at least half a dozen different devices to connect to Yahoo mailboxes.

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Keeping the Kindle momentum high, Amazon has announced the next generation of Kindle DX is available for pre-order today, and will be shipping on July 7th.

The new Kindle DX has the same 9.7" screen size, and the same free 3G wireless, but features a new graphite chassis and a higher contrast e-ink screen with a purported 50% improvement in contrast. Furthermore, all of this is available at a price about 25% less than the first generation DX.

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Firefox may be coming to your iPhone soon, however not in the form you might expect. Mozilla on Wednesday said that it submitted an app called "Firefox Home" to Apple for iTunes App Store approval, an application which would sync browser activity between the user's iPhone and desktop.

It is not a separate browser, as Mozilla knows that Apple would likely reject it if it was. Instead, Firefox uses the WebKit API provided by Apple and intended for use in web browsing applications.

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Perhaps those rumors about iPhone going to Verizon are true. Microsoft is killing off KIN, just six weeks after putting the smartphone on sale. Microsoft launched the KIN -- its youth-oriented, consumer social networking smartphone -- in early April. Today, the company answered the question I asked on May 5: "Is Microsoft KIN stud or dud?" Somebody up the corporate decision tree decided the latter -- or perhaps that KIN isn't stud enough to share Verizon with iPhone. Concurrent with KIN's sudden death -- oh, baby, we hardly knew you -- Microsoft is shifting resources and personnel to Windows Phone 7.

Earlier today I asserted that iPhone 4's "Death Grip" launch "may rank among the top marketing fiascos of the 2010s." Microsoft already has one-upped Apple. KIN is a disaster of magnanimous proportions.  In February 2008, Microsoft announced acquisition of Danger, which technology and resources were dedicated in part to KIN. Thereafter, Microsoft spent millions of dollars developing KIN, in two models, and bringing it to market. As recently as the weekend, I saw KIN commercials during prime-time programming; Microsoft invested in a massive marketing campaign, too.

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Woot said Wednesday that it had been acquired by Amazon, although it provided few details on what exactly will become of the online deal site other than it would become an independent subsidiary much like the online retailer's other acquisitions, Zappos and Audible.

Sources told technology blog TechCrunch that the sale price was in the neighborhood of $110 million in cash. In an e-mail to his employees, CEO Matt Rutledge seemed to suggest that not much would change as a result of the new owners.

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The largest oil spill in the history of the United States is taking place right now in the Gulf of Mexico, and there are a lot of questions that need to be answered. Tomorrow, July 1 at 3:30pm EST (12:30pm PT) on CitizenTube, BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley will participate in a live interview moderated by PBS NewsHour's Ray Suarez where users submit the questions.

Right now, there are about 40 user-submitted questions posted for the interview, under the categories: BP accountability, Relief well status, cleanup plan, Gulf Region Recovery, Government Role, Environmental Impact, Future of BP, Future of Offshore Drilling, and "Other." Anyone can submit a question under one of these categories, in the form of a simple text-based message in Google Moderator, or as a YouTube video.

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Over this past weekend, Verizon slashed the price of Microsoft's two Kin phones by 50% to $49 and $29 respectively. Today CNET's Ina Fried got the word from Microsoft that it is halting further development on the phone line to focus on Windows Phone 7.

The two devices, which were launched a little over two months ago, were marketed to younger users and specialized in social networking and location-based media.

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Augmented Reality, the title given to applications that use mobile device sensors to lay cloud-based data over real world images in real time, found an early home on Google's Android platform.

The Wikitude World Browser, for example, was one of the breakthrough augmented reality apps for consumers and was originally released for Android. In the year since Wikitude World Browser launched on Android, approximately 100 augmented reality apps have been released on the platform.

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Two major Linux-based mobile operating system efforts, Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin were combined earlier this year into a new project going by the name of MeeGo which will ultimately support a wide range of mobile devices, including smartphones, tablets, notebooks, set top boxes, and more.

In March, the core MeeGo distribution infrastructure and OS base were made available to developers so the two code bases, teams, and projects could be combined into a single Linux distribution. MeeGo version 1.0 for Netbooks was released in May, and today, the baseline source code of MeeGo for handsets has been released as a developer preview.

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Are you among the seemingly bazillions of new iPhone 4 owners who sound like a Verizon commercial: "Can you hear me now?" Ah, no, they can't hear you, buddy, and that's the problem. Apple's so-called iPhone 4 "Death Grip" -- where holding the phone in the left hand dampens the cellular signal -- may rank among the top marketing fiascos of the 2010s. This is not how Apple wanted to launch its fourth iPhone.

Strangely, and certainly not how Apple marketing executives planned, iPhone 4 is living up to marketing tagline: "This changes everything. Again." The original iPhone took away capabilities, like sending MMS messages, and held back others -- 2G data and calling when other handsets, and AT&T's network, supported 3G. The iPhone 4 takes back something more fundamental: The capability to make clear phone calls (OK not for all users in all circumstances but plenty enough to make Death Grip one of the hottest topics on the InterWebs this week).

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Adobe's dominant Flash video technologies are seeing their first legitimate challenge from HTML5 and its video tag, but don't expect YouTube to be joining the ranks of video sites making the transition to the standards based media format any time soon.

The popular social video site said that HTML5 video does not yet meet all of its needs, although it called the format "a big step forward for open standards." Parent company Google just last month launched its own open source video codec WebM, a possible candidate for the final video standard.

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Sony Electronics and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a recall of about 233,000 Sony Vaio notebook computers in the U.S. as part of a wider-flung recall that the Wall Street Journal today said could include about 535,000 units in total.

Mike Lucas, Senior Vice President of the Vaio brand today said that the VPCf11 and VPCCW2 series of notebooks can overheat "due to a potential malfunction of the internal temperature management system, resulting in deformation of the product's keyboard or external casing, and a potential burn hazard to consumers."

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This month, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders have been engaged in some serious e-reader competition. Following the introduction of Borders' bargain-priced Kobo e-paper reader, both Barnes and Noble and Amazon cut the prices of their Nook and Kindle products to put all three products on a level playing field. All three book retailers have been pushing their cross-platform software readers too, jockeying for superiority in the e-book trade.

But retail price wars and marketing blitzes are only one side of the business. Today, Amazon made a significant appeal to another side: independent content publishers.

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