I’m delighted to announce that TechCrunch / CrunchGear are holding a Berlin meetup with our partner and co-organiser twidox. The “TechCrunch / twidox German Web 2.0 Meet-up” will be in Berlin, on the 11th of June. Imedo.de has kindly offered to throw the networking event at their offices here from 7:30 pm onwards (pictured above, nice huh). Peter Ha will be there from the US to represent CrunchGear together with Mike Butcher who writes for both TechCrunch UK and TechCrunch. We both look forward to being able to say “Ich bin ein Berliner”! We still have a couple of sponsorship opportunities available, so should you be interested, please let us know via our amazing co-host and co-organiser Nicholas MacGowan von Holstein, Twidox Co-founder. Please note that because we are restricted on numbers, this is strictly an ‘invitations only’ event, meaning only those that received an invite via the XING guest list will get in. We have 100 tickets to give away though. How do you get to be one of the 100? Just go register on the twidox private beta and the first 100 will get an invite. We are looking forward to seeing you all on June 11th! Thanks again to our great list of sponsors, who keep these events free to attendees. Here are the sponsors in alphabetical order (as we have not created a tier system on this ocassion). aka-aki – takes the social network to the streets: it shows you on your cell phone the profile information of the people close by. aka-aki automatically writes a personal diary that makes it possible to get in touch later on. once you got to know each other aka-aki lets you take your friends with you in your pocket and stay in touch on the go. aka-aki is clicking people – in the real life!” Allyve – all you have, all live. Allyve is your remote control with preview for the internet: all you have, all live, alive! Deine Tierwelt – With 4 Mio visits per month Deine-Tierwelt.de is Germanys leading pet community. The platform offers new concepts of “user engaged advertising”. We invented the new ad format “StageAd”: an innovative use of video for online communication. Gimahhot – Gimahhot is the world’s first B2C Ecommerce platform on which brand products are traded like on the stock exchange. Similar to Amazon’s Marketplace, users can buy immediately at the current → Read More
Todays Top Posts: Wits and Wagers now on XBLA… plus a contest Interns needed 100-year-old Adix calculator: elegant, beautiful, and practical The loneliness of joining the social Id announces Doom 4 Wii’s Nintendo Channel is now live BT making a comeback in the mobile services world, makes me LMAO Mass Effect for PC has crappy dial-a-DRM Phillips jumping into touchscreen phone race External HDD coming for PS3 from Sony? → Read More
PlugandPlay’s third annual Expo was held today at their Sunnyvale TechCenter, drawing nearly fifty exhibitors from an array of markets that included mobile advertising, massively multiplayer gaming, and medical technology. The venue itself was a little strange – a large meeting space/multipurpose room that seemed better suited for a crowd half the size of the expo’s 400 attendees. Seats were in very short supply, though the crowd dwindled as the day progressed. The expo’s main draw was a 46-company-long elevator pitch marathon that lasted for nearly two hours. Each company was allotted approximately two minutes to impress potential investors, though some didn’t seem to pay much attention to the rule. With very few visual aids (and no breaks) the presentations got a little tedious at times, but there were a few bright stars in the bunch. Among my favorites: Epsodic- Epsodic wants to take events from typical computer games and visualize them with fully rendered cutscenes. The technology will take a supported game’s data and animate pre-fabricated characters. Novauris – One of the better-established companies at the expo, Novauris wants to provide speech recognition technology for mobile devices. The on-stage demo featured a cell phone’s voice lookup for Michael Jackson’s Billy Jean. It’s not a new idea, but I want it. The TechCenter is the unconventional brainchild of entrepreneur Saeed Amidi, who has created a “startup ecosystem” where creativity and competition run rampant. The flagship office, located in Sunnyvale, is currently home to 129 companies, and there are a number of smaller locations across the Valley. With a near-constant stream of VCs and monthly Web 2.0 events, it’s easy to see why the TechCenter appeals to so many startups. Amidi fosters the community by selectively permitting only “exciting” startups to rent in the building. Of course, his motivations are not exactly charitable – he gets a first look at any company that wants to take space, and has invested in around 20% of them. CrunchBase Information PlugAndPlay Saeed Amidi Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Movie junkies, rejoice! Criterion, the people who bring the very best versions of movies with lots of extras to DVDs, has officially announced its going Blu-ray. That means many of the best films ever made totally remastered for 1080p, specifically tailored for the format. It makes those $40 boxed sets actually worth the price. Hit the jump to see a list of the films available soon! → Read More
In what can only be termed a crushing defeat, leading torrent site TorrentSpy has been ordered to pay more than $110 million to the MPAA by a US District judge. It’s been a losing battle following TorrentSpy’s decision in March to make a stand by erasing a huge amount of MPAA-requested data they considered private. This isn’t the time for sites like TorrentSpy to win cases like this — that’s still a ways off. In the meantime, though, their best course of action is to do what TorrentSpy and the Pirate Bay have been doing, even if that means you get hammered with an unfathomably huge fee. For those about to pay, we salute you. → Read More
Facebook has posted more details about the upcoming redesign of user profiles, which were supposed to launch early April but are apparently now close at hand. Profiles will be broken down into 5 main tabs: Feed, Wall, Info, Photos, and “Boxes”. The feed tab appears to contain the News Feed as we know it, except with three new size standards: one line, short, and full. There’s also a bit of confusion between this Feed tab and the new Wall one. Apparently users will be able to post items to friends’ Feed tabs (and their own) using a new Publisher tool. This is described as meant to replace the old wall attachments feature, so it appears as though the Wall will revert to plain text posts and no longer allow for rich media. But it will also incorporate all mini-feed items somehow. Some suggest that the new Publisher feature will allow for FriendFeed-like conversations through comments, but the official documentation doesn’t make any reference to such capabilities. Screen shots showing comments appear to be only wall-to-wall conversations. The “Boxes” tab will be where all the current application profile boxes are quarantined, er, showcased. While 5 tabs will show by default, users will be able to add their own tabs that display canvas-like pages for their favorite apps. This appears to be a trade-off Facebook is imposing on developers: isolate their profile boxes in a “boxes” tab but compensate them by allowing for more prominent, full-view pages. That said, Facebook will also be allowing up to 5 app boxes to show up across all tabs in the left-hand column (but they’ll have a severe height restriction). Unfortunately Facebook has yet to release any screenshots of the new design except for the rather uninformative one above. More information at Inside Facebook. CrunchBase Information Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
So you know how all those people have been up in arms about the adult content in games like GTA IV? And how they think that the ratings need to be tougher? A few politicians don’t think they go far enough. They want to actually start using retail cashiers to police who buys what, IDing people when they purchase to make sure they’re of age. I’m OK with this for cigarettes and alcohol, but for a game? Games aren’t dangerous, but I guess someone has to think about the children. Or, how about if they go about the real work of congressmen, trying to end the war, feed the homeless, and fixing our gas prices? Yes, Lee Terry (R-Neb.) and Jim Matheson (D-Utah), I’m talking to you. STFU & GBTW. → Read More
This has to be the most cockamamie way to score a deal I’ve ever encountered. For Mother’s Day, T-Mobile will waive the activation fee if you’re lucky enough to come across the banner ad on MSN’s home page. I’ve tried looking for it to get a screen grab, but I have a life and I refuse to sit here any longer. Simply follow these instructions put forth by TmoNews and you’re well on your way to being the biggest cheapskate of all time. This is, however, a two day special and I have no idea when it starts. → Read More
Despite Marvel’s attempt to shut down our Iron Man screening in SF last week, I have nothing but good things to say about them. Well, Marvel Studios to be exact. If you haven’t seen Iron Man yet than something is seriously wrong with you or you have way too many commitments. It was hands-down the best comic book-based movie I have ever seen and I LOVE Batman. Batman Begins was fantastic, but it doesn’t hold a torch to what Marvel Studios was able to do with Iron Man. My faith in comic book related movies has been fully restored. I do have high hopes for the next Batman movie, though. → Read More
NBC’s president of digital distribution, J. B. Perrette, explained in an interview the various reasons they recently chose to go with Zune for the distribution of their shows online. Perrette says that first of all, they liked that Microsoft was more flexible with the pricing. I can see that, I think Apple’s a little stiff on that front. But NBC’s other beef with Apple was the company’s refusal to build DRM into their iPods to protect NBC’s stuff. I thought Apple was in the right there. But Microsoft is willing to work with NBC to create “filtering technology that allows for playback of legitimately purchased content versus non-legitimately purchased content.” And how, pray tell, will this mystery chip/program/rightware determine what is non-legitimately purchased? It seems that there is plenty of legal content on the net that is technically indistinguishable from illegal content. I can think of no way to pull this off without restricting fair use. Perrette says “In the short term, this will not win us a lot of friends.” Yes, and in the long term, it will lose you customers. Without friends or customers, NBC is going to be pretty lonely. Update: This was pretty much wishful thinking on NBC’s part. → Read More
I have no idea if the guy doing all the product pitching works for any of the companies mentioned in any of the videos, but he is freaking hilarious. I can’t stop laughing. The Gatorade video is probably the funniest one of all. I hope companies don’t plan on advertising like this in the future. Maybe the guy was smoking some herb or crack. → Read More
Sony’s extremely expensive 11-inch OLED TV that landed stateside earlier this year claims a lifespan of 30,000 hours or 10 years, but DisplaySearch says otherwise. The research firm tested two XEL-1 TVs for 1,000 hours and estimates that the organic light-emitting diode set would fizzle out after 17,000 hours. “The results demonstrate that the Sony display is significantly inferior in many ways to the current (OLED) designs,” DisplaySearch’s researchers wrote. But that’s not even the best part. DisplaySearch says that a cell phone made by Samsung with an OLED screen would last longer than Sony’s TV. Yeah, you may want to rethink spending $2,500 on this gadget. → Read More
You read that right, folks. The champ is back! A young Mike Tyson will be in EA’s fourth installment of their popular boxing game, Fight Night Round 4. I remember growing up and watching Tyson on HBO when he was in his prime. It was a sight to see and I still remember how fast he was. He was untouchable and then he got all crazy and drunk on power or high on coke. Can’t wait to see gameplay footage on this. → Read More
SteelSeries is an established brand over on the other side of the pond, and their gear is respected among pro and enthusiast gamers — there are even SteelSeries-sponsored clans and teams. Now the company is bringing their game over here and I have been so lucky as to get a good look at their full range of stuff. Look for full reviews later, but for now, if you’re curious, there’s snippets inside. Click below for more. → Read More
Well, look at that. Everyone remembers the Glyde, right? Maybe you remember it as the u940 or the CDMA variant of the F700 that we broke last year? Anyway, it looks like the Glyde is getting closer and closer to launch on Verizon as evidence of its existence has shown up on Verizon’s site. There’s a slew of accessories available for it and most of them are generic, but the photo below of the Body Glove case pretty much seals the deal. We’ll keep our eyes peeled for any hard evidence of its official launch. Thanks for the tip, James. → Read More
I won’t mumble my opinion of Android anymore — *ahem* dead on the vine *ahem* — but that won’t stop folks from creating software for it. TuneWiki is an iPhone-esque media player for Android (it’s already out on iPhone homebrew). It adds Karaoke-style lyric readouts to your songs, which is nice. Right now it works in the emulator but the video above gives you a look at what it may look like in the future. → Read More
For World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia, the Vatican is going high tech. It will be setting up a social networking site much like a Catholic Facebook where people can sign up to get prayers online and text messages from the Pope. Wait, I can get a text message from the Pope!? I’m not even Catholic but that sounds so awesome! Think he’ll use texting shorthand? Like for the Lord’s Prayer? to: god n hvn: u r kool. we want kool & 4 earth 2b like hvn. giv us food 2day & 4giv r sinz like we 4giv sinz. lol! save r souls, cuz we kno u r tight, u r strong & u r kool 4evs. werd. I hope not, but still, I’m going to sign up. I got a text from Ron Jeremy once, but this would be cooler. → Read More
If you like movies and you like bald people, go ahead over to iTunes and pick up Hitman for free right now before someone figures out what’s up. Go to the store, click Movies->Thrillers. Click Browse on the right side and select hit man by director “Unknown.” Looks like a bug in coding, but it downloads just fine and it’s as free as a walk down a country lane in the Springtime. Not sure how Macenstein figured this out but it might be something to watch in the future. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
