NBC Dumps iTunes! Apple Dumps NBC! What ever the headline, one thing is sure: by making it even more difficult to obtain affordable, legal downloads of TV shows, more and more people will be turning to Bit Torrent. In Apple’s case, it’s not really their problem, but with NBC you really have to question the business sense of a company that states it is concerned about piracy, then makes the legal alternative more difficult to come by. As demonstrated in the image below, NBC shows are in plentiful supply on BitTorrent. I’m sure users will welcome the flood of additional downloaders. NBC shows available via BitTorrent include Scrubs, ER, My Name Is Earl, Heroes and just about everything else. → Read More
The New York Times has discovered a new claimant for the title of founder of Facebook. Aaron Greenspan, a Harvard classmate of Mark Zuckerberg claims that he created the original college social networking system, before either Facebook or ConnectU were founded. Mr. Greenspan is said to have established a web service that he called houseSYSTEM in 2003, 6 months prior to Facebook launching. houseSYSTEM was used by several thousand Harvard students and provided similar features to what is found today in Facebook; Zuckerberg was a user of houseSYSTEM. Greenspan is also claiming credit for Facebook’s name: he showed the Times an email dated Sept. 19, 2003 describing the newest feature of houseSYSTEM as “the Face Book.” Facebook initially launched under the name and URL of “TheFacebook” in 2004. Unlike the founders of ConnectU who are suing Zuckerberg for control of Facebook, Greenspan’s claim so far only extends to wanting recognition by others as being the founder of Facebook. Update: In related news, Facebook has once again asked a judge to throw out ConnectU’s law suit. More here. → Read More
Bob Marley’s family is NOT happy about Verizon going over their heads to ink a deal with Universal Music Group to sell exclusive Marley ring tones. Verizon will also be able to use Marley’s image exclusively. According to the family, such use would constitute an endorsement which would and should allow them to set parameters on how Bob’s music and images could be used. They won’t be able to control any of it if Universal and Verizon win this one. Universal is calling the family’s claims “meritless” and insists that it’s operating within the terms of a longstanding contract. → Read More
Here’s a quick bit of watch geekery. There are a few types of watch lume, the stuff you paint on dials to make them glow. Some companies use little vials of tritium and some just use a luminous paint that holds a “charge” for a few hours. Here is a guy who ran a test on a three watches, a Luminox, a Seiko, and a Ball. The Seiko and the Ball use tritium while the Seiko uses a standard lume. He ran the test for about three hours but you’re supposed to be able to see all three for at least 10 or so. Cool shots, though. Lume Test: Ball EMII Diver, Seiko Monster, Luminox. [WatchUSeek] → Read More
We’ve always known that Google has wanted to challenge Microsoft’s desktop dominance in a number of areas, but to date we didn’t know that extended to gaming. Hidden inside Google Earth is a secret Flight Simulator that takes full advantage of Google’s extensive satellite imagery. To access the hidden feature, open Google Earth and hit Command+Option+A (note it must be capital A) or Ctrl+Alt+A if you’re using a Windows Machine. The Google Earth Flight Simulator comes with two aircraft options, a F16 Viper and the more manageable SR22 4 seater. Players have the option of commencing the game from their current location in Google Earth or can pick from a list of pre-determined runways. Control instructions can be found here. Overall the game play is fairly simple in terms of control, but the striking difference is flying over real pictures of locations. I took a quick flight from San Francisco International, headed North to the Golden Gate then turn back over the city before heading towards the Valley. It wasn’t perfect, but it was as good visually as the paid Microsoft Flight Simulator, and in terms of actually presenting real objects it was better. Thanks to Marco for the how-to. CrunchBase Information Google Earth Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
We’ve gotten an update on the controversial post we wrote earlier this month on the possible shutdown of the fourteen-month-old old Digg-clone Netscape. Too many AOL execs have had their eye on the Netscape.com domain name, which brings in 3 million or so page views per day. The most likely scenario – The current home page at aol.netscape.com becomes the default page for Netscape.com, and the year old digg-clone moves to a new domain. We hear that wow.com, a domain previously owned by Compuserve and acquired by AOL, is a potential landing place for the Netscape service. AOL may have different plans for wow.com, however, and the Netscape portal may land somewhere else. Either way, look for a link or module from the old service to remain on the netscape.com domain after the changeover. We also expect to hear about material layoffs at AOL in the next six weeks, possibly as much as 15% of the 16,000 strong workforce. Next week the senior execs are supposed to be notified of the exact size of the cuts and whether they are targeted to specific business groups or across the board cuts. → Read More
I’m a SeV fiend. I wear SeV shirts when I travel because it wicks away sweat and nastiness and they can be washed in a hotel sink without much trouble. I also wore an SeV jacket and pullover last winter and I’m glad to announce that they have a new version, the Evolution, coming out in October. You can pre-order it now for $120 and if you like gadgets, you might want to take a look. → Read More
The LG KS20 has officially been announced at IFA and Vincent from SG strikes again with a demo. Enjoy. → Read More
If you’ve been holding off on purchasing the Hidden Fronts map pack then your wait hasn’t been in vain. Starting this Labor day at 2AM PDT, you’ll be able to download the pack for FREE. AWESOME. → Read More
http://progressive.playstream.com/playstream/progressive/flashplayers/FLVPlayer.swf Found this odd German forklift training video that half-way reminds me of those old Army comics they used to put out and maybe Day of the Dead. I would love to work at this place, though. All that blood. Kinda NSFW, as well. Happy Labor Day! → Read More
Someone owes me some burned-out retinas. via Giz → Read More
This news has been simmering for a while. When Ross Levinsohn (pictured left) resigned as the President of Fox Interactive Media late last year it was rumored that he intended to raise a large fund to acquire Internet startups. He soon partnered with Jonathan Miller, the former Chairman and CEO of America Online and the two have been out raising capital for the last few months. Their new entitiy is called Velocity Investment Group. They’ve found their partner – $15 billion hedge fund General Atlantic. Details on the amount of capital committed to the new fund are scarce, but General Atlantic issued a press release today announcing that Levinsohn and Miller have become advisors to the fund. The timing is interesting – 5:14 pm EST on the Friday before the long weekend. The press was circling on this story, and the release was obviously made to preempt the news from breaking. More news should be coming next week as details leak – size of the fund, etc. The new venture will compete with Demand Media and others for acquisitions. Demand Media, which has raised $220 million in capital, was founded by former Intermix Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt. Ironically, Intermix Media, the parent company to MySpace, was acquired by Fox during Levinsohn’s tenure there. Update: We beat the WSJ by 16 minutes on this one. Their story is here. → Read More
Wikipedia attracted a lot of attention earlier this week when Nikola Smolenski calculated how much paper it would take to print out the English entries in Wikipedia. Smolenski calculated that as of last September, Wikipedia’s English index of informative/controversial articles would fill about 750 400 page volumes. Under the assumption of a 6MB volume, the total site would take up about 2,500 volumes (~15GB). Today Scribd has released some numbers talking about just how big they’ve gotten as well. Since launching 6 months ago, the site has collected over 178,798 documents. That may not seem like much compared to Wikipedia’s over 5.3 million articles (source) across all languages (as of last September), but Scribd users seem more verbose. Scribd users have uploaded over 1.9 billion words, which would take up over 2,287 of Smolenski’s volumes (13.4 GB). No word on how many of those words are copyrighted. However, Wikipedia is still obviously the pageview king, drawing over 7 billion pageviews (June) and 42.9 million (Feb) visitors per month, to Scribd’s 3.8 million uniques. Google was responsible for 24% of the traffic, and I imagine the same is true for Scribd. Wikipedia also features highly targeted and edited content to Scribd’s library of reports and rants. Although, unlike Wikipedia, Scribd is helping a lot of people catch up on Harry Potter. Scribd has had quite a ride since launching over 6 months ago. They sustained a considerable amount of traffic after launch, and eventually went on to raise $3.5 million from Redpoint Ventures. Apparently, easily publishing documents online was not a solved problem. Here’s a chart of the word growth of both Wikipedia and Scribd: Note: According to statistics listed on Wikipedia, the site (all languages) has grown from 49,000 words in January 2001 to 1.7 billion words last September (the last reported point). Since the data only goes to September 2006, I extrapolated the growth (yellow) assuming the previous year’s monthly growth rate of 7.7%. → Read More
His fault? No. In no way, shape or form did video games, violent or otherwise, shape the actions of Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho. (Just like John opined several months ago.) That’s the conclusion reached by a panel under the watchful eye of Virginia Governor Tom Kaine. It turns out the only experience Cho had with video games was with the likes of Sonic, hardly a game that inspires violent behavior. In fact, Cho hardly did anything. Nearest his roommate could tell, all Cho did was study and download music. Time for the liberal, mainstream media to find another scapegoat, ’cause it looks like video games won’t cut it this time. Report: Virginia Tech Massacre Unrelated to Games [GameDailyBiz] → Read More
Damn. Apple just gave NBC walking papers. NBC declined to continue their contract and Apple basically said cyabye. That’s some serious hard ball. I guess I’ll have to torrent my Heroes from now on. “We are disappointed to see NBC leave iTunes because we would not agree to their dramatic price increase,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We hope they will change their minds and offer their TV shows to the tens of millions of iTunes customers.” Apple Slaps Back, Gives NBC the Preemptive Boot From iTunes [Giz] → Read More
We seemed to have misplaced our tickets to IFA this year, but Vincent from Slash is getting some great coverage of LG’s latest gem, Viewty. → Read More
We are hosting a party in central London next week on Thursday, September 6 to support the Seedcamp event and to announce some TechCrunch UK news. Most of the spots are reserved for Seedcamp attendees, but we are opening up 100 tickets to the public as well. To discourage no shows, we are charging a £10 fee per ticket, which will be donated to charity. Tickets are available here. There will be plenty to drink (and we’re working on food), and we’ll be giving away a ticket to the upcoming TechCrunch20 conference. I will be flying in to London for the Seedcamp event and to attend the party. Hope to see you there. We are taking a limited number of sponsors to offset the cost of the event. Email Jeanne Logozzo for more information about sponsoring the party. → Read More
Sony Ericsson mobile phone owners will soon be able to add an extra 8GB of storage-y goodness. The Sandisk M2 cards are currently being tested by phone manufacturers and should be available to the public later this year. Pricing hasn’t been set but a quick check on Amazon shows that the 4GB version can be had for just under $75, with an MSRP of $99. So perhaps the new version will be available for around $100-$120 when it’s offered later in the year. This is all well and good for the relatively small percentage of phones and devices that use this format but howsabout bumping MiniSD and MicroSD capacities up a little bit now, eh SanDisk? SanDisk Press Release via Mobility Site → Read More
Want to know what you’ll be doing the morning of September 4th? Lining up at your local Game Stop, Toys R Us or wherever to hopefully snatch up one of the limited edition Halo 3 headset and controllers. Failing that you could pick up a 360 Messenger Kit that includes the backlit Chatpad and a headset. All things Halo 3 will retail for $59.99 while the Messenger Kit is a mere $29.99. → Read More
Gotta love the Web. Here’s the video of Nokia’s touch screen mobile phone that caused everyone at the Nokia: Go Play event to laugh throughout the entire thing. I was completely speechless and so was Seth. → Read More
