One of the risks of trying to find a niche to build a startup is that the big guys can land on your face at any time. That’s why all of these startups are going to be in serious trouble when Adobe releases a free, ad supported online version of Photoshop in six months. This announcement comes at a time when developers are lavishing attention on Adobe’s Flex platform, particularly in the video editing and sharing space. I think it’s reasonable for startups to question if Adobe will plan on competing with them in areas beyond photo editing. If that’s the case, these startups may not want to spend their time and venture dollars testing out various products, only to have Adobe jump in the middle after all the dirty work is done. Adobe is both a platform company and an application company. Conflicts are not avoidable. → Read More
Laptop just confirmed that Verizon is launching V-Cast video tomorrow. The service will cost $15 a month or $25 a month for video and mobile web. There will only be a few markets at launch including Albuquerque and Salt Lake City, but expect UHF bands to clear up in other cities soon. This is mostly exciting for Verizon customers who like video on the mobile, which is something we are sorely lacking here in the states. It’s exciting to see someone else taking the initiative to bring us into the 19th century. Verizon V CAST Mobile TV Launching Tomorrow [LaptopMag] → Read More
A new site called Spotplex launched today that arguably sorts news in a better way than Digg does. I’ve been testing the service for the last couple of weeks and like what I’ve seen. News stories are not submitted by users, as with Digg. Instead, sites that want to participate include some javascript code on their site, which monitors what stories/posts are read. The more times a story is read, the higher it appears in Spotplex. Very popular stories will make it to the Spotplex home page. The resulting home page on Spotplex looks a lot like Digg, showing very popular content. Popular stories are ranked under the “popular” tag. Upcoming stories (the default view) are under the “latest” tab. Readers can also view stories based on popular current tags being used by publishers, and can view a ranked list of top publishers here. The service is still very much in beta. For now only a handful of blogs have been included. The site itself is open for anyone to read stories, but only a few blogs are included so far. The company will be bleeding in new blogs over time to avoid strain on their servers. To kick things off they’ve agreed to allow up to 1,000 blogs in to SpotPlex. If you want to be included, just email “signup@spotplex.com.” The first thousand requests will get in right away. Can Spotplex become as popular as Digg, or more so? I think it can if it evolves properly. Unlike Digg, Spotplex won’t have to deal with voting fraud. Spotplex will have their own unique fraud issues to manage, though. Another problem with Spotplex is the fact that large blogs and publications will dominate it to start just because they have large readerships already. To avoid this “the rich become richer” problem, I’ve suggested to Spotplex that the rankings be based on a publication competing with itself – so only very popular stories on TechCrunch (compared to average TechCrunch traffic) would get to the Spotplex home page. The Spotplex team has said that they’ll be tweaking their algorithm constantly after launch based on real data they get from the beta. Spotplex is a spinoff of another startup, Opinity. The founding team includes Doyon Kim and Young Jun Pack. → Read More
Berkeley, California based Wesabe will announce a $700,000 round of financing tomorrow from O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (as well as a couple of individual investors), and Tim O’Reilly will join the company’s board of directors. A good overview video of the service, which launched in December, is below. Wesabe is best described as a web version of Quicken, but with some fundamental differences that make all the difference in the world. Transactions can be tagged, for example. Also, as individual merchants are renamed by multiple users to make it more definitive (think about the crazy merchant names that appear on credit card statements), this better merchant data is automatically distributed to all other users as well. One key difference between Wesabe and Quicken is a maniacal obsession with security and privacy. You can download data from up to twelve credit card, bank and other financial accounts. Your account credentials are never stored on Wesabe’s servers, though. You either download the data to your personal computer and then upload to Wesabe, or store your account credentials in an encrypted format on a small piece of Wesabe software on your computer. The result is that hackers can’t access your account credentials by breaking into Wesabe’s servers. Wesabe has also spent a lot of time making it as easy as possible to leave the service. You can easily export your data and, more importantly, delete it directly from the Wesabe servers. The service has been live for three months: $300 million in transactions have been recorded from 130,000 distinct merchants, and 1 million tags have been applied. The company has eight employees. This is OATV’s third investment (they also put money into Instructables and Chumby). → Read More
Can you say blogfight? UPDATE – It seems there was no line for the press, but where I was standing there sure seemed like a line. Perhaps there’s no line for people who get the PR folks attention while the rest of the journos stand quietly waiting to be checked in? → Read More
Kotaku scooped a tasty little piece about Ethur, a faith-based cult in California, attacking Nintendo’s Wii. In a press release released by Ethur and ThePornTalk.com, the initiative attempts to expose the dangers of WiiPorn (not to be confused with WeePorn, which is a whole different story altogether). The frightening quotes come from ThePornTalk.com founder Mike Foster. Like the zipper and so many other devilish creations that came before them, argues Foster, WiFi enabled consoles are gateways to sex, debauchery, AIDS, and, worst of all, becoming a liberal. Foster believes that despite the safeguards available on the Wii and similar system, parents seldom take advantage of the precautionary features. The result is a veritable porn heaven that, in addition to blindness and hairy palms, will lead to, you know, a fiery hell. Anywho, here is the full press release for your entertainment: → Read More
Sometimes it takes bold moves for real action to happen. Lucky for us, Representatives Richard Boucher from Virginia and John Dolittle from California have the guts to stand up to the RIAA and say “We don’t need no stinkin’ DRM!” The digital fair use bill was introduced to Congress today, which is supposed to give customers more rights when buying digital content. Basically, it’s a way of giving DRM the boot and handing choice back into the arms of the consumer. Maybe Steve Jobs will get his wish of having a DRM-free iTMS this year, though I’m not holding my breath. If there ever was a time to call your congressman/woman or state rep., now is the time to do it. Let’s show groups like the RIAA and MPAA that we’re sick of their crap and we demand change. Digital ‘Fair Use’ Bill Introduced In Congress [Washington Post] → Read More
Long “celebrated” by consumers for its lenient return policies, CostCo has begun to feel burned by its nice guy persona. Customers have taken advantage of the policy to an unfair degree, returning ancient items in exchange for newer, fancier devices. Great for the customer, bad for business. In response, CostCo is cutting its open-ended return policy back to 90 days—which is still pretty damn good. It will also be extending the warranties on TVs and PCs for total of two years. And it will start a technical support hotline in order to provide assistance to frustrated consumers. While it sucks to see this go away, I really can’t complain. For starters, we don’t have CostCo in Louisiana, so it’s irrelevant to me. But, speaking reasonably, that return policy was shenanigans. A total money pit for the company and wholly unnecessary. Costco tightens return policy on electronics [MSNBC] → Read More
No real information on this one beyond a few pics. We know it’ll be a GPS (duh it’s TomTom), SD, Bluetooth dialing and voice SMS and interface changes. It’ll also have a new docking system that will allow you to cradle your TomTom and use it to control an iPod or USB storage device. More pics after the jump: → Read More
No matter who you are, you’re bound to have at least one juicy video on your cellphone. Whether it’s footage of a riot, you making out with some girl, or Blake’s Mom giving a lavish striptease, chances are your cellphone screen is just too small to enjoy watching anything longer than 30 seconds. Neochroma is looking to change that by blowing up the size of your cellphone’s display to computer monitor size. It works by laying your phone on top of the device and then looking through it like a Viewmaster 3D. The company says that the device should be relatively inexpensive and available in the next two years. Neochroma enlarges tiny mobile phone displays to desktop monitor size [Neochroma] → Read More
I’m actually quite intrigued by this simply because it could be a great way to put out “breaking news” at shows or events. This is nothing new: you take some video or an image and it pops up in a Cellblock window almost immediately after sending, without transcoding or other nastiness. The service uses a standard email address – presumably you could just email content from your desktop, but that wouldn’t be any fun – and posts content immediately on receipt into an embeddable player. http://www.cellblock.com:80/flash/cellblockPlayer.swf?cbId=llYPadzeCQEuTaQYUqan&mute=onStart The upload was, in fact, instantaneous with nothing to do on my part. The real value could in in live-blogging events for immediate broadcast, but that’s a limited application. For a bit of fun, however, give it ago. You don’t have to add your own cellphone number unless you want the enhanced version, so it’s relatively safe. UPDATE – Not sure why there’s no audio. UPDATE 2 – Just realized that you, too, can livebloggogogo! Email funtimes@cellblock.com and rock out! Cellblock → Read More
In this week’s IP-Review on digital cameras and displays, we find a slick Konica Rollable LCD screen for digital cameras and found an “immersive theater” concept patented by Kodak. What looks to be taken out of the movie Minority Report, the Konica display technology is described as using “electronic paper, [wherein] the liquid crystal layers of red, green and blue are superimposed, attraction and separation of toner between two layers is used, and the organic EL is light-emitted on the film.” Highly compact, we’d really love to see Konica push this development into a prototype. Is something in the works? → Read More
Seriosity has a solution for over-crowded email inboxes. If you want someone’s attention, you’ll be paying for it. The company’s hook is that they’ve studied World of Warcraft and other multi-player games and believe they’ve found the right way to get people’s attention – virtual currency. You attach a payment to an email, called a Serio, which is transferred to the recipient. The recipient is able to determine how important an email is based on the size of the payment. When an inbox is overcrowded, presumably the reader will sort through to the higher paying emails. This strongly reminds me of beenz, a Web 1.0 currency that would be handed out for doing various things, like visiting web sites, that users otherwise wouldn’t be bothered to do. The company fell apart just after the Nasdaq tanked earlier this millennium. What isn’t clear is what people can do with the currency other than send emails. Let me convert this into cash or frequent flyer miles or something else, and I’m in (beenz did this). Otherwise, what’s the point, other than to amass a stunningly large number of Serio and then spend it on…sending emails. The company, founded in 2004, is based in Palo Alto and is using $6 million in venture capital to feed 27 hungry employees. See CNET for more. → Read More
is a one-stop online shop offering built-to-order laptop batteries for models both new and old. And though on first viewing of the company’s homepage I thought it made the batteries from babies, the picture is apparently a reference to the “Born On” date that appears on each battery ensuring freshness. Finding the right battery using the site’s multiple search tools was completely painless compared to other shopping experiences I’ve had hunting for the right model for my notebook. The prices seem competitively priced and better made than the cheap, no-name OEM cells available. (They are assembled and tested in the USA.) FreshBattery.com also has a bunch of information on battery care, maximizing performance, general FAQs and how to recycle your old batteries. → Read More
http://www.metacafe.com/fplayer/445498/robotic_beer_launching_refrigerator.swf Sometimes we see a prototype that gets our mouths watering. The iPhone from Apple is a great example. Another is the beer launching fridge. When this thing hits the Home Depot, we are so getting one, as we’re for the advancement of beer-drinking technology. Homemade DIY gadgets are the best, you own them, you make them, and there’s no pressure to break it before the warranty is up. That’s why we salute the Duke fan who invented this robotic sunshine. While there’s no room in our apartment for sudsy projectiles, we one day hope to incorporate one of these into CrunchGear HQ. [Via Coolest Gadgets] → Read More
There were a bunch of product demos today at Adobe’s Engage event, but there were a few that stood out and should have a big impact on the startup world. They also happened to be some of the best demos of the day. Virtual Ubiquity – Rick Treitman demoed their word processor application, BuzzWord, which was built entirely in Flex 2 and looks like it could be a direct competitor to Google Docs. The team focused heavily on making sure pagination and typeography were first class, something Flash has been bad at. They’ve created a great UI around the document workflow and have features like ruler tooltips when embedding assets that help people work with their documents. They are focusing on the collaborative document space so that users can be designated as reviewers, read-only, or actual authors and discuss the document. They are aiming for a public beta later this summer. Scrybe – Faizan Budar presented Scrybe and showed the features that were in the video that generated so much buzz. He demoed all three major features live and made a point of saying that everything in the video is now working in the application. He showed off the calendar portion of the application, which has a great UI, the “PaperVision” which allows you to print your information into special pocket size chunks, and the option to save content to your Scrybe account from any website. The user interface is clean, useful, and it all works offline. They’ve opened up the beta to a limited number of people and hope to open it up to the general public after their next round of features are complete. yourminis – Alex Bard, the CEO of Goowy Media , demoed what yourminis is working on. A lot of it has been covered by TechCrunch, but they really dug into Apollo and the API that they plan to release next week. With Apollo, they are building out a widget platform that will touch the web, embeddable properties, and the desktop. Alex took a yourmini widget and dragged it to the desktop straight from the browser which made for a poweful demo. Their API is going to enable developers to create their own widgets on the yourminis platform. They built a Twitter widget using the API that is great, so I think content providers are going to be excited about the freedom that the API → Read More
page and pop in your new drive. Easy peasy. Now your Mini has no moving parts, more space, and you gain a feeling of power over your own things. Great for everyone. I actually did a similar thing by replacing my 40GB iPod Photo’s hard drive with a 60GB, again thanks to iFixIt. I can’t encourage you to hack your gear enough. It’s our right and it empowers us as geeks. Turn Your iPod Mini into a flash based iPod [Geektechnique] → Read More
The iRiver Clix 2 is a 2.2″ media player with a Flash UI and standard audio and video playback. It’s fairly cool and has a high-resolution screen and a bit less power consumption thanks to a new AMOLED screen and 2- or 4-gigabyte models available in the US along with an 8GB landing in April. What angers me, however, is the writer’s decision to make the entire review one big JPEG. Clearly someone just downloaded Photoshop and/or is afraid H{~}X0RZ will steal his C()NT3NTZ. Clix2 Review [Clixhere] → Read More
Looks like those 5 million patents Steve was talking about didn’t stop one clever wag from creating a fully function iPhone shell for Windows Pocket PC. This guy has done everything — except make Windows look like less of a piece of crap after you get past the sexy initial UI. It’s like walking into a brand new home and finding oily rags and offal piled up in every room. Watch the iPhone interface running on a Pocket PC [TechDigest via Giz] → Read More
If you happen to have some pricey headphones, a good headphone amp can really make the difference between merely impressive sound and truly ass-kickin’ audiophile glory. Enter the HeadRoom Desktop Amp ($599), a relatively compact headphone amp with a bevy of input and output options and some hot internal components. I recently had a chance to check it out with a set of Sennheiser HD650s and Etymotic ER4S canalphones. Here’s the lowdown. → Read More
