Seattle based wiki-startup Wetpaint has been talking to a number of big content sites about a new product they’ll be releasing soon, we’ve heard. The screen shot above is a mock-up that Wetpaint is using to pitch potential partners. The product is an embeddable wysiwyg wiki. That alone is interesting, just because there aren’t any easy ways to embed a wiki into third party sites today. Google Sites doesn’t yet allow embeds, for example. PBWiki, a popular wiki startup, does allow embeds via their API, but it isn’t as simple to use as most widgets. But what we’re hearing is that this isn’t a simple javascript or Flash embed. It’s a deeper integration that requires an insertion of code into a site’s back end application files. That allows the wiki to be created at the server level, not simply rendered in the user’s browser like most widgets. The idea is a pretty straightforward way to go about doing this, although we haven’t heard of any products doing this before. Why is that interesting? It’s interesting because it pulls the Wiki content directly into a site’s HTML and allows it to be indexed by search engines. That means partner sites will get the SEO benefits of the wiki, a major plus for these partners. That’s all we know for now. The product is being called Balco, although that may be an internal project name, not the name of the to-be-launched product. If Balco is as useful as we’re hearing, it’s definitely something we’ll use here at TechCrunch. Update: PBWiki’s David Weekly adds something related to this in his API documentation (scroll to bottom). When/if Wetpaint launches Balco, we’ll do a side by side comparison. CrunchBase Information Wetpaint Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
BlackBerry fans take heed for the BGR has learned a few things about the upcoming BlackBerry 9000. Everything we reported was true. 624MHz processor, 480×320 screen, GPS, Wi-Fi, 3G, etc. The web browser flies. “Loads web pages in 3-4 seconds.” The BlackBerry 9000 in its current state runs OS 4.5 Early launch date was slated for a consumer AT&T launch on June 18th. Remember that we predicted the device was delayed. See below. The battery lasts around 4 hours with straight phone calling. “Battery sucks, to be honest. With Wi-Fi on, I only got a little less than two hours browsing the web,” and all testers are reporting huge battery issues which could be why we’re all hearing it is delayed. We’re not sure of the next part, but he said that the device either has 256MB of internal memory or 128MB. Don’t ask why we couldn’t tell the difference. → Read More
Blancier is a custom watchmaker. You can go to the site, pick out all the components, and get a handmade watch delivered to your door in a few weeks. I personally reviewed one and I loved it — they used Molnia movements and huge cases and have a neo-classical look that is just amazing. Well, they now have a few other “limited edition” pieces including this model, the Crazy Planet, with the hand drive gears hanging out on the face of the watch. Note: the speed at which this model is running is not quite accurate. I suspect they had an issue in the rendering. Regardless, take a look if you’re into mechanicals. No price or availability yet. → Read More
The very-businesslike MOTO Q9c will be available this summer to Alltel subscribers in lime green or “licorice” colors. I certainly don’t mean for anyone to take this personally, but it’s my opinion that lime green is a ridiculous color for a business-oriented cell phone (or any type of gadget, for that matter). That’s just me, though. That’s just me. I’m guessing that the “licorice” version is a little more subdued, although Motorola’s press release didn’t indicate whether it was red or black licorice. If it’s blazingly bright red in color, you’re going to have to decide which is the lesser of two evils for you. Luckily, it’s black licorice. Trust me. The Q9c for the Alltel network will be available sometime this summer for $99 after a $100 mail-in rebate and two-year service agreement. → Read More
When we hear from Aviary it’s bound to be something entertaining and fun. The New York based company remains in private beta but adds to its suite of image manipulation products regularly. The newest tool is called Dodo, a web-based time machine. A video demo is below. You upload an image to the service and it will “age” it based on user input. An example: upload a picture of yourself, tell it how many years out you want it to age you, tell it how much you drink and smoke, and not any planned plastic surgery. It will then show you what it thinks you’ll look like down the road. Aviary says the tool isn’t just for fun – that it may also be useful for “tracking down long missing children,” and “determining if a girlfriend will end up looking like her mother.” Demo video below. What’s the technology behind it? Well, it’s pretty close to magic. Anything is possible in early April, it seems. CrunchBase Information Aviary Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Publish2, the stealth Digg-Clone-For-Journalists that announced a fundraising this morning, is being very quiet about exactly what their product is and how it works. In an interview last week they told me only friends and family were testing it. Well, it turns out “friends and family” is fairly expansive term in their book, and includes a lot of people who are quite willing to talk about it. As we said, Publish2 is a Digg-like site where anyone can submit links but only journalists can vote those links up and down. It also has a private research feature that lets journalists bookmark items without sharing them. “It’s like Delicious,” said one person testing the service, adding “I would never use the public part of the service, I’m too competitive to share my research with other journalists.” So Publish2 looks to be a little like Digg and a little like Delicious. The only problem is that it may not be as good as either of those products. CrunchBase Information Publish2 Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Sony Ericsson’s HSDPA Z750a just dropped on AT&T. It will cost $50 after rebate and comes in purple, grey, and pink. It has a 2.0-megapixel camera and runs on AT&T’s 3G network. Sure it’s no X1 or even one their latest UIQ phones, but it’s nice that Sony Ericsson is launching phones in the U.S., right? I’m actually quite upset. S-E used to be a giant and their phones used to change the game on a regular basis. Now they dump a 3G clamshell every year and call it a day. They’re like my lazy uncle who talks about his days playing college ball. → Read More
We are moving closer and closer to the social inbox—email that talks to your social networks. Today, Xoopit launches in private beta. Not to be confused with Xobni (another email 2.0 app), Xoopit is a plug-in for FireFox that lets you easily view all the photos, videos, and files buried in your e-mail as attachments and sent to you as links from across the Web. The first 700 TechCrunch readers to sign up here will get in. CEO Bijan Marashi explains: We are building an index of your personal information across the Internet. Email is the most important repository of your personal data. Xoopit processes the social media you have been piling up for years and transforms it into a fun application. The application indexes your Gmail (other email services will be added in the future) and lets you view attached files (photos, videos, etc). It also fetches any images that friends might have emailed you from Flickr, Picassa, Shutterfly, Kodak, or YouTube. It is an attempt to turn your email inbox into a dashboard for managing all the pictures and videos everyone emails you all the time. In turn, you can post your own photos, videos, and other media directly to Facebook, your blog or email from the application. Xoopit is also announcing a $5 million A round from Accel and Foundation Capital. It previously raised $1.5 million in an angel round from Foundation Capital, Michael Dearing, Jeff Ralston, and Eric Telenius. CrunchBase Information Xoopit Xobni Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
It’s only been a few months since MWC 2008 but that doesn’t mean US carriers can’t get in on the new cellphone act. Peter and Doug are winging their way to Las Vegas for CTIA Wireless 2008 as we speak, promising to cover a number of new “cellular telephones” including R.I.M’s new “Blueberry” electronic mail phones and Motorola’s hot RAZR phone that promises to replace the StarTAC. If you’d like to meet up with us on the show floor or at a floor show, drop us a line at tips @ crunchgear.com. You can read our coverage right here. → Read More
If you are going to be anywhere near Amsterdam this Thursday or Friday, you should go to the Next Web conference. It is one of the best gatherings of European Web 2.0 startups and entrepreneurs. Nine days ago, I had no plans to travel to Amsterdam. But tomorrow I will be flying over there to moderate the two-day event. (Don’t ask how this happened, but it involved a late-night phone call interrupted by the Amsterdam police). TechCrunch UK’s Mike Butcher will also be attending. TechCrunch is a media partner, which means TC readers can get 200 Euros off the 750-Euro ticket price by entering the promotion code “tc08″ when you register. The speakers include the usual suspects, like Garret Camp, Robert Scoble, and Kevin Rose. An episode of Diggnation will be filmed and streamed live from the stage. But the real draw is a series of rapid-fire presentations from 24-and-counting startups (including eBuddy, Fav.or.it, Empressr, CoComment, and Radionomy—each one gets five minutes) and all the Euro 2.0 networking you can handle. The organizers are a trio of crazy Dutchmen who are themselves Web entrepreneurs and started the conference a few years ago for themselves and their friends. These are the same three entrepreneurs who once famously showed up one morning at TechCrunch headquarters (aka Mike’s house) in white suits. One of them, Patrick de Laive, explains how they try to make the Next Web different: The conference is cool because we don’t focus much on making money but more on content, networking, and fun. We’re Internet entrepreneurs, not conference organizers. We make sure we have the best speakers in the world talking about the future of the web and not about their companies. We don’t have sponsors on stage or CEOs telling us how well they did last year. → Read More
Microsoft has reportedly inked a deal with Hollywood producer Peter Safran to produce entertainment content for Xbox Live. Safran’s been tapped to produce genre-specific short episodes (less than 10 minutes) that appeal to 14- to 34-year old males. His client list includes Sean Combs, Nia Vardalos, and filmmakers Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. I know — I’m excited too! Look for the new content later this year, around fall. Microsoft’s expected to ink similar deals with other content producers as well. → Read More
Like the depths of my soul, the Palm Centro from AT&T now comes in obsidian black. While this won’t change the fact that this is a Palm Centro, it’s nice to know that you can now get a Centro in black or white (aka glacier) for $99.99. → Read More
Here’s an interesting development: Kyocera is building a new KJ4 series print head that can print at 150 meters per minute at 600×600 dpi, which equates to about 1,000 sheets per minute. Check your box for your current printer’s speed and be amazed. The head should go into printers next month. Kyocera uses ceramic piezoelectronics to make this 4-inch head squirt out ink faster than a squid at a calamari festival. Sorry for that last joke. It’s early. → Read More
Hard, impacted stool? Try Grape Nuts. Isn’t there a war on? Shouldn’t Sony be doing something better with its R&D budget? → Read More
Barry Diller won a court battle today against Liberty Media’s John Malone. Now Diller can finally go ahead with his plan to break up InterActive Corp. into five pieces—HSN, Ticketmaster, Lending Tree, Interval International, and the new IAC (Ask.com, Bloglines, Citysearch, Evite, iWon, Match.com, BustedTees, Vimeo, GarageGames, and CollegeHumor). Malone, IAC’s largest shareholder, was trying to prevent the spin-offs from happening. Whether the financial maneuver will “unlock” any value for shareholders remains to be seen. (I’d be surprised if it did). But there is no doubt that IAC is an unwieldy, multi-headed beast whose collection of disparate businesses never really had much to do with one another. As I reported last November: Diller will continue as CEO and chairman of IAC, which still remains somewhat of a grab bag of about 30 Websites. But at least those businesses are starting to finally be able to stand on their own feet. It doesn’t make much sense for them to be weighed down by Lending Tree because of the mortgage credit crisis or overshadowed by the Home Shopping Network. IAC’s holding company model gave shelter to its startups with the earnings of its more established operations, but any troubles in the larger businesses are difficult for the smaller ones to overcome no matter how fast they are growing. The problem, as came out during the trial, is that those underlying Web businesses are not growing as fast as Diller had hoped either. Ask.com failed to reach its goal of doubling its market share of search, and Ticketmaster missed out on the growth of the secondary ticket market and recently had to buy TicketsNow for $265 million to compete with StubHub (owned by eBay). Can an independent IAC compete more effectively against Web startups, or is it just a collection of Web 1.0 dogs? (Photo by JDLasica). CrunchBase Information IAC Ask Citysearch Evite Match.com Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Look how big I made this photo of the BlackBerry Curve! It’s one of five sorta new handsets that’ll be available on the Verizon network in the not too distant future. Let’s run through them all one by one, shall we? → Read More
San Mateo based mobile phone advertising provider AdMob has passed the 20 billion ads served mark. Since March 2007 the company’s monthly impressions have grown from 500 million ads per month to 2.5 billion advertisements per month today. AdMob’s 20 billionth ad impression was from financial services conglomerate HDFC. The ad was served in India at 1:56am GMT on Tuesday, March 25, while a visitor was browsing Cricinfo’s mobile web site on a Nokia N70. We’ve covered AdMob a couple of times, but it’s a company doing some big numbers that we don’t hear that much about. Their client list is first rate: companies currently using AdMob include Porsche, Ford, Toyota, Adidas, CoverGirl, Herbal Essence, EA Sims, Terminix, TruGreen and Let’s Talk. Where it gets better (and why this is a company just waiting to be bought out) is two key clients: Google and Yahoo. The web’s two leading companies are using AdMob to advertise their services on mobile phones. \ CrunchBase Information AdMob Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Everybody wants to get in on social networking and user-generated video. Reality Digital, a white-label YouTube that lets media sites add video-uploading and social-networking features, raised $6.3 million in a series B financing. OpenView Venture Partners was the sole investor in the round. The company previously raised $2 million in a series A from private individuals in November, 2005. In addition to video-uploading, Reality Digital’s platform can also handle audio, blogging, mashups, mobile uploads, profiles, forums—pretty much any feature that you’d see on MySpace or Youtube. It also includes a full management suite that lets companies monitor usage and manage advertising campaigns. Customers include MTV Networks, the Travel Channel, Lonely Planet, and the Daily Reel Reality Digital also powers the back-end of Adobe Premier Express, which is Flash-based software for creating video mashups. Reality Digital competes with KickApps, VSocial, and VMix. CrunchBase Information Reality Digital KickApps VMIX Media Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
