Tired of iPhone coverage? Want a safe haven? Click here to read stories with nothing to do with the iPhone. CrunchGear: Always Thinking of You, Our Dearest, Cutest, Little Reader. → Read More
ComputerWorld has rounded up a number of old-timey computer ads touting $12K 80MB disk systems and some sort of new thing called E-Mail. “Your mailbox is the terminal on your desk. Punch a key and today’s correspondence and messages are displayed instantly.” Wow-mazing! It’s been years since I’ve really enjoyed a technology ad — probably not since the Viao ads of the late 1990s where they guy was walking on water dressed in Blade Runner-esque fashion. Ahh, those where the days… when technology was fresh, new and marketers had no idea how to sell it. ’80 Mbytes of storage for under $12k!’ and other ad favorites through the years [ComputerWorld] → Read More
CG got a brief hands on with Nikon’s new, high end, DSLR at Digital Experience yesterday. This bad boy is going to run you about $4,600. Here are some of the key features in case you haven’t read up on it yet. – Continuous shooting at 5fps at 12.4 megapixels, 8fps at 6.8 megapixels – Image sensor with 12.4 effective megapixels – 11-area auto focus system – 2.5-inch LCD display – 37 millisecond shutter lag Click on for a few more shots. → Read More
Verizon: Come to our party or we’ll shoot this dog. You’ll be standing in line for the new LG VX 9400 multimedia and TV phone plus some kind of music kit with 2GB memory card for only $99, right? That’s why all of the New York area Verizon stores will be open late on Friday night in anticipation of the hordes who will be beating down their doors hunting for a phone that is only slightly better than a Conair landline sitting next to a TV playing reruns of SportsCenter. Yes, friends, this is how the big boys play dirty. While AT&T stores will be pushing away hordes of fanbois, Verizon is launching a PR offensive to talk down the iPhone on multiple fronts. Interestingly enough we haven’t heard from Sprint or T-Mo on this topic, potentially because they probably know when to shut the hell up and start getting cooler phones. The iPhone has stolen Verizon’s spotlight. Solution, beg for PR. [GadgetTell] → Read More
AMD and Microsoft, two great tastes that taste great together, are teaming up to sell a new PC, the IQ, in Bangalore and Pune, India for about $513. The PCs run Windows Vista Basic — no flying windows for you, kids — and Works along with some test prep and English learning programs as well as an MSN IQ Education Channel. The PCs will be distributed by Zenith Computers. Microsoft launches new low-cost PC effort in India [News.com] → Read More
Logitech today announced two new webcams that each incorporate hot Carl Zeiss lenses. The QuickCam Pro 9000 (above) is true 2-megapixel cam intended for desktop use, while the QuickCam Pro for Notebooks incorporates the same features into compact and portable unit that includes a tripod. Both of the units carry a price point of $99 and should be available soon. I had the opportunity to look at these a couple of weeks ago and I can attest that they have the best image quality of any webcam I’ve seen. It’s game changing sort of stuff. The interesting part though, is that Logitech now has an exclusive arrangement with Zeiss Optics that allows them to be the sole producer of Zeiss-equipped webcams. → Read More
In the past two weeks, Peer-to-Patent has opened up a USPTO approved project allowing an open review of pending patent applications. Registered members are encouraged to read through the patents available and provide opinions on prior art and obviousness that can then become part of the PTO Examiners review of non-patent references. Today, Peer-to-Patent announced that they have taken a space on Democracy Island on Second Life allowing members to interact with videos and see information on the project. Go to where your target audience is, that’s what they say. Peer-to-Patent Opens in Second Life [Peer-to-Patent Blog] → Read More
Greetings, readers. The Best Commenter Ever has been MIA for the past few days but now it will be up daily at about 9PM EST. Thanks for your great comments, they have been increasing in quality and we are really grateful that we have such an active readership. Anyway, ProfessionalGun earned the first spot after telling us what he thought about Apple fanboyism. We agree. Cheers to that, Nicholas. Apple makes very inspired products that pull a very devoted fan-base. . . → Read More
Sure you’ve got a GPS onboard your boat (you HAVE a boat, right?), but chances are your yacht is missing a satellite-fed HDTV and digital fishfinder. I recently caught wind of the produce line from New Hampshire-based Raymarine, which makes pretty much everything you need to make your fishing tugboat into something Cribs-worthy. Highlight: a wearable pendant that goes “Beep “when somebody falls overboard during your booze cruise. If nothing else, it should at least help your insurance rate until you get out into international waters. → Read More
On Friday, as the entire literate world knows, Apple will release the iPhone to much hoopla. And when the mix of the unemployed and the wealthy who could wait in line on a workday to finally get their hands on their $600 box of hype, they’ll find that, for the first time, “iPod” no longer merely refers to their pocket-sized MP3 player, but also to a software program within another device. This can only be seen as a trend within the technology industry: What were once standalone hardware items are increasingly being ported into simple software emulators–emulators that have the potential to be loaded onto numerous devices. → Read More
How quickly they grow up. Our little Vince Veneziani’s website, SimpleWeather.com, made it to the top 25 websites Time magazine’s editors can’t live without. How cool is that? Little Vince thought up SimpleWeather while trying to make some granny porn and wanted to see what the weather was like in Boston — a real hotspot when it comes to granny porn. The resulting website — elegant, easy-to-use, and wonderfully simple — made headlines when we wrote about and, as a result, Time magazine staffers with nothing better to do read about it and put it their list. 25 Sites We Can’t Live Without [Time] → Read More
I was sure trading site Swaptree had been abandoned. After a flurry of press about them over a year ago, they went very quiet. Potential investors told me they’d just stopped returning calls completely. My own emails went unanswered as well. They had the smell of death about them. But it wasn’t so. It turns out Swaptree had merely gone quiet and was focused on building out the product. They are now in private beta and say they will launch to the public in just a few days, on July 4. Like Peerflix and LaLa, Swaptree is focused on letting users trade certain stuff with other users. Users can trade CDs, DVDs, video games and books. To use it, you build two lists. The first is a list of items you are willing to trade. You can simply type in the UPC code or ISBN of the item – Swaptree will then add a picture and other important information. The second list is made up of things you want. This list can be created by clicking on items on the Swaptree site, or even easier ways like importing your Amazon wish list or using a plugin to click on items on Amazon directly and have them included on your Swaptree “wish list”. Swaptree will then look at your demand list and supply list and try to set up trades for you. To make things simple, Swaptree assumes you’re willing to give up any item on your trade list for any item you want. They will then set up a trade, using as many as four users to make it happen. That way, the person with the item you want doesn’t need to want something you have. The only way the model will work is if Swaptree gets a lot of users who each add a lot of items they want, and are willing to trade. To help things, Swaptree doesn’t charge anything for trades – you only have to pay the outbound postage on the item you are sending. The company will make money from advertising on the site. → Read More
Bye-Bye Nextel HD DVD Dead By Fall 2007 MizPee: What It Sounds Like Baja Motorsports 70cc Dirt Bike Review Roundup: Apple iPhone Reviews → Read More
There’s a subset of viral video sits that have been popping up focusing on verticals. One of the more recent entrants was the comedy site Funny Or Die, which made waves when Will Ferrell’s short sketch “The Landlord” exploded across the net (over 36,539,017 views). Monster Dare joins DareJunkies in bringing dares to social video. The idea is a bit like a softer version of MTV’s Jackass Mixed with the competition site Bix. Monster Dare is a social network where you can wager money on daring your friends or the general public. Each of the dares is broken down into categories like romantic, challenging, or even x rated. When a dare is declared, members can donate to a money pot to entice anyone or a specific person to carry it out. They can collect on the dare if they provide photographic or video proof for the audience. By contrast, Dare Junkies has a large pot that users are competing over, which goes as high as $5,000 for any of the challenges they put on the site. Since Monster Dare’s payments are made through PayPal, they are somewhat bogged down with transaction fees that may kill the service. They charge 50p if you deposit £5, but nothing on depositing higher amounts. They also charge a flat £1.50 for removing money and take 10% from winning dare funds. → Read More
You don’t hear the name “Feedster” very often any more, other than the occasional joke about how they managed to execute even more poorly than Technorati. I frankly assumed they were among the walking dead – the place startups go when they don’t have pressure to shut down but don’t have enough money or human assets to do anything interesting, either. The last time we wrote about them was February 2006, more than a year ago. But it appears that Feedster is alive and kicking – they launched a major redesign today, and a new widget product that allows searchers to quickly add search results to any website. They also have a new search engine, they say, that helps reduce spam. It looks like there are a few hiccups with the widget – I created and embedded one but it won’t load properly. My opinion: When a company gets this sick and falls this far behind, and the market they are in is now dominated by Google, it’s generally a good idea to return what’s left of capital to shareholders and let the employees move on to more interesting projects. Nothing good is going to happen with Feedster. I’m not particularly impressed with their search results (this will not pull users from Technorati or Google Blog Search), and few people will be interested in the widget (not that Technorati releases stuff like this all the time, they just don’t talk about it). → Read More
Read this excellent post by James Hong, co-founder of the nearly seven year-old startup HotorNot. He talks about the history of the startup, and touches on where it might be going in the future. A lot of this I wrote about last month after interviewing Hong, but there’s lot of additional information that people will find fascinating. The company never raised venture capital, and was throwing off a significiant amount of cash early on. As free dating competitors emerged, however, the popularity of the site declined. They responded by going free as well (killing a $500,000/month revenue stream), and traffic has doubled to around 20 million daily page views. HotorNot is now looking more like a traditional startup – they’ve converted to a C corporation and are giving stock options to employees. That suggests a sale or venture financing might be coming up in the near future. Of course, the amount of fun that Hong and cofounder Jim Young are having. My favorite stat about HotorNot: Up to ten marriages per day can be tracked to couples who originally met at the site. → Read More
Online invoicing service FreshBooks has launched an open API. Freshbooks sees the new API allowing application designers, businesses, services companies, and users to integrate FreshBooks’ billing platform into a new category of products, features, and solutions for enhancing and streamlining productivity, workflow, sales, CRM, project management, and invoicing. Possible uses of the API including adding to existing products to extend functionality, including timers, project planners, and desktop widgets. Sites with an existing sales infrastructure can use the API to add a billing component. There are a lot of possibilities here and Freshbooks really has nothing to lose by offering an open API service. The API is an open invitation to innovation and should keep Freshbooks in could stead against competition including BillMyClients and Blinksale. Previous Freshbooks coverage on TechCrunch coverage here. → Read More
Zentation is a free service that marries video with PowerPoint presentations, delivering a mashed up version of both for online viewing. Using Zentation is simple. Users upload their video to Google Video, log into Zentation and copy and paste the URL of the Google video, then upload a PowerPoint file. The final step involves using the “ZenSync” tool to provide precise start timings for each graphic in the presentation. Zentation currently only supports Google Video; apparently Google Video the only major video sharing service that allows users to jump to any point in the video even if it has not fully downloaded. YouTube does not provide this functionality and Zentation believes that it is essential for the service. Mashed presentations can be viewed directly at Zentation.com or through an embedded widget like the one below. Some people will groan at the thought of marrying PowerPoint presentations to online video. It’s bad enough having to sit through any conference or presentation which relies heavily on PowerPoint, yet on occasion PowerPoint slides can add to the experience. PowerPoint addicted professional speakers will love Zentation by enabling them to add their slides to recorded video presentations. Zentation is not the first app trying to bring PowerPoint style presentations to the web. Sites like Slideshare offer online PowerPoint hosting and WebEx, DimDim and TeamSlide also compete in this space. Zentation differs by providing a mashup service with video, yet all collectively demonstrate a growing interest in the online presentation space. http://www.zentation.com/viewer/zentationminiplayer_h.swf?passcode=692291&gotoGoogleURL= → Read More
Social news site Thoof, privately launched nearly two weeks ago by invitation only, is now open to anyone. Our launch post is here. Thoof is about personalized news and incorporates elements of Wikis, Digg/del.icio.us voting features. Users submit stories to the service as a link to the news item, along with a title, description and tags. Other users start to see the news item if Thoof determines they will like it. However, submissions can be easily be edited by other users who think there is something lacking. CrunchBase Information Thoof Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Google has announced the launch of Google Gadget Ventures, a new pilot program that will help fund third-party gadget development and gadget-related businesses. Google will offer two types of funding: $5,000 grants for gadget developers who want to improve an existing gadget, and $100,000 seed investments for new gadget-related businesses. Applications will be restricted initially to gadget developers who have more than 250,000 pageviews per week on their gadget. Google aims to “help create an ecosystem where developers can spend more time doing what they love — building great gadgets”. In other words Google wants more gadgets for iGoogle and Google Gadgets and what better way to encourage development than to offer money to gadget builders. It probably goes without saying that this is a smart move by Google; Google’s gadget specific offerings are all smart products but still lag in gadget choice compared to competitors such as Yahoo Widgets, a number of Web OS and Widget specific startups and even OSX. A full FAQ for the program is available here. → Read More
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