How cute is that? Tread-based robots are limited to very few moves on the dance floor (for instance, they can’t do their namesake), but that doesn’t stop this remote-controlled R2 unit from cutting a rug with these young ladies at Maker Faire. Looks like a lot of fun. You can find out more about the project at Artoo-Detoo.net. → Read More
Brad Greenspan’s Live Universe continues its acquisitions spree: they’ve bought troubled Silicon Valley startup MeeVee, we’re heard from multiple sources. This comes less than a month after they announced the acquisition of Pageflakes, another northern California startup. We do not know the acquisition price, but it is undoubtedly less than the $25 million Meevee has raised in venture capital over the years. The company, which was founded in 2000, let 20% of its staff go in mid-2007, and made more layoffs earlier this year. Meevee integrates online TV listings with video. In 2006 we compared them favorably to other online tv guides, and the product has evolved significantly since then. Still, they never got the traction they needed for a big liquidity event. Perhaps Meevee will find a comfortable home at Live Universe, which has, among many other properties, a popular online video site called LiveVideo. The MeeVee team will report to Dan Cohen, the former CEO of Pageflakes, according to our sources. CrunchBase Information LiveUniverse MeeVee Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
I love it when people fight back against the RIAA. Their bullying tactics are getting old, and it seems the courts are realizing this. Last week a judge made it clear that making files available for download — seeding a file to a P2P network, for example — is not copyright infringement. There are other stories of people fighting back, and Atlantic vs. Boyer. Boyer’s attorneys are being awesome and countersuing the RIAA for a number of offenses, and it’s a juicy, lovely list. The counter-suit states that the RIAA’s wrongdoings include civil conspiracy (to commit extortion, illegal investigations, and computer fraud), computer fraud and abuse, trespass, deceptive and unfair trade practices, declaratory judgment, and abuse of process. Wow. Sadly, the judge dismissed the countersuit, though that’s surprising. Hopefully Boyer’s attorneys will think of something else to screw the RIAA right where it hurts. → Read More
There was much speculation — especially on the part of this blogger — that the release of GTA IV the same week as Iron Man might hurt the films revenue, the idea being that nerds would be hunkered down with their Xboxes trying to finish the game, or that many had spent their monthly fun budget on the $60 game, with nothing left for Tony Stark. That’s not the case. In fact, both the game and the film did boffo, with GTA IV bringing in close to $500 million, and Iron Man grossing $100 million its opening weekend. Either nerds smartened up and saved for both, or they decided they needed a break from Roman, always bugging them on the phone. Both the game and film are absolutely excellent, and both worth the money, and that, I think, is the reason they both succeeded. → Read More
I’m proud to announce that Ning’s Marc Andreessen, Sequoia Capital’s Roelof Botha and Google’s Marissa Mayer will join us on September 8 – 10 in San Francisco for the TechCrunch50 conference Panel of Experts. The experts will judge the fifty startups launching at the event, and then discuss each of the demos on stage as a group. More details on the conference are here. TechCrunch50 is a three day conference where fifty new startups will launch over three days. There will also be a number of topical panels and workshops. The event will be held at the San Francisco Design Center, a huge and beautiful venue that can accommodate over 1,000 attendees with ease. There will be 24 experts in all, more will be announced in the coming weeks. Tickets for the event can be purchased here (early bird pricing is available until July 15). The submission process to launch your startup is here. More on the TechCrunch50 blog. Marc Andreessen Marc Andreessen is the co-founder of Ning, the create-your-own social network platform company that has raised over $100 million in funding. He also serves on the board of Open Media Network. Marc is best known as a co-founder and chief technical mind behind Netscape Communications Corporation and co-author of Mosaic, the first widely- used web browser. Roelof Botha Roelof Botha is a partner at Sequoia Capital focused on services and software investments. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 2003, Roelof served as the Chief Financial Officer of PayPal (EBAY) and worked as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company. Roelof is a certified actuary (Fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries), has a BS in Actuarial Science, Economics, and Statistics from the University of Cape Town and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Marissa Mayer Marissa Mayer is VP, Search Products & User Experience at Google. She joined Google in 1999 as Google’s first female engineer. Her efforts have included designing and developing Google’s search interface, internationalizing the site to 100+ languages and launching numerous features and products. Several patents have been filed on her work in artificial intelligence and interface design. Before Google, she worked at UBS research lab (Ubilab) and SRI International. Marissa has been featured in various publications, including Newsweek (“10 Tech Leaders of the Future”), Red Herring (“15 Women to Watch”), Business 2.0, BusinessWeek and Fortune. Thank you to our early corporate sponsors: → Read More
New startup KickNote, founded by Brian Erickson, will be launching a “Battle Of The Bands” event this summer that will allow people to watch, and vote, online. The actual concerts will be held in the New York city area, so this event will be called “Battle of the Boroughs.” Thirteen separate events will be held over three rounds; 50 bands in total are expected to participate. The entire process will take seven weeks. KickNote is partnering with Justin.tv to deliver the live video to viewers. There are various prizes for the winners, although the potential notoriety and exposure will drive participation. The company says they’ll have a second event in the Fall, based in Los Angeles. Promotional video for the site is below. Artists interested in participating can sign up on their home page. → Read More
The long-running dispute between AMD and Intel, in which the former alleges anti-trust violations by the latter, has a new wrinkle. A key point in the battle is coming up, and AMD has released to the public its laundry list of accusations. Or, at least, something like that. It seems they (or more likely Intel) feel that the public is not ready to hear what AMD has to say, so they’ve blacked out a huge amount of the 108-page document.</a Although much of the actual text is missing, there are suggestive headings and a who's who of technology business scattered throughout the document, and a even a little melodrama: AMD is only beginning to understand the nature and extent of Intel’s predatory tactics towards Gateway over the past decade. You can download the whole thing over at the Reg, if you really want to. → Read More
Yesterday we wished happy birthday to the iMac, the personal computer from ten years ago that more or less saved Apple, leading the way to change the computer industry — as well as the music industry — forever. We posted the video of Steve Jobs introducing the iMac and the nostalgia was palpable. But what were the reactions? Reader Dan showed me this clip from a MacWorld from ten years ago, giving its first impressions of the new computer. While the review is generally favorable, there are some parts that are humorous a decade on. Most dramatically, this new consumer offering has no SCSI port, no standard serial ports, and no ADB ports. Apple has opted to replace these familiar connections with USB, a high-speed serial architecture that has suffered from slow adoption on the Wintel platform despite its technical advantages (see the sidebar “USB: Ready for Prime Time?”). Currently, no USB devices exist for the Mac. I can’t wait till someone calls out the crap I write on here now ten years from now. → Read More
Comcast doesn’t like its customers. Well, not all of them, especially those who actually take advantage of the massive amounts of bandwidth it makes available, and is preparing to penalize those of you (or of us) that download tons of content. Rumors from Broadband Reports, the excellent connectivity ratings site, show that Comcast might be considering 250GB per month caps on individual lines. That really isn’t a lot of data, especially if you work from home and use your connection to download docs or other files from your work servers. Comcast is already on the hook for arbitrarily sending out “dude, you’re downloading too much” letters to customers, but this is just getting silly. If as an ISP it’s going to offer unlimited bandwidth, it needs to truly be unlimited, or else we’re going back to the 25MB a month AOL stuff from the mid ’90s. → Read More
Nikon’s strict naming conventions seem to have betrayed them. When they release a battery grip, they include the model number it’s for in the name. So the D200′s battery grip is the MB-D200. Well, they recently let fly the “MB-D10,” which fits the D300. The source says he has never known Nikon to just arbitrarily change a name like that, so given the size the battery fits and the rumors swirling about of a camera of such-and-such capacity coming up soon, this is the conclusion: a D300-sized 5d competitor, priced and spec’ed lower than the D3 but higher than the D300. And because of the Olympics and Photokina, he notes that this is prime time for camera announcements. Maybe this hot tipper should get a job as a private investigator. → Read More
Like many of you, my first FPS gaming experience was Doom. It was on an old 486 with the “turbo” button engaged. It was maybe five frames a second and looked like shit, but back then it was revolutionary. Id’s bringing Doom back for a fourth time, officially announcing development is starting on Doom 4. No word on what the game’s like, but we’re guessing you navigate corridors and shoot monsters. → Read More
The Wii’s Nintendo Channel is now live. It’s a channel that basically has instant access to downloads of game demos, promotional videos, and other content from Nintendo and its partners. Not for everyone, but many Wiitards have been itching for it. You’ve got to update your firmware to use it, but then you can go nuts. → Read More
Apologies to our friend from the Seattle meetup who hates steampunk; this was too great to pass up (and not strictly steampunk). This wonderful little machine was state-of-the-art in 1903, when it was used for adding up columns. That’s really all it can do; it has no functions other than addition because the mechanism is so simple and elegant, each paddle shifts a gear a certain amount corresponding to the numeral being added, and the aggregate of all the shifts is recorded up to 999. It’s even got a “clear” button. More photos and a more in-depth explanation of the mechanism here. [via Retro Thing] → Read More
Apparently those of you who’ve been waiting for the PC version of the popular console game Mass Effect will have to make sure your DSL bill is paid up, as the game requires an online connection even for the single player mode. Why’s this? Because the game will phone home every 10 days [scroll down three posts] to make sure you haven’t shared your activation key or are using a cracked copy of the game, that’s why. This is an awful form of DRM that’s uncalled for. It’s bad enough that EA doesn’t trust its customers when they activate their games, but the fact that they keep checking on you stinks of hubris. I’m not a PC gamer, but if I were, this kind of crap would make me want to buy an Xbox. → Read More
Looks like Phillips is looking to get a piece of the touchscreen phone action with the X800, says Chinese site CCID. Based on the pictures they’ve obtained it looks like the UI is a mishmash of Sony’s PSP/PS3/whatever else and Samsung’s Croix interface. Details are very scant with this one, but one picture suggests it will launch in Hong Kong under Vodafone. → Read More
I find it quite laughable that BT is making its return to the mobile market with a “BlackBerry-style smart-phone” considering that device is the HTC Dash, which is a dinosaur here in the States. The service itself dubbed Total Broadband Anywhere seems akin to T-Mobile’s HotSpot@Home service. Actually, it is the same thing. The other device being rolled out with BT’s new service is the Mogul you’ll find available with Sprint. I like HTC devices, but these are two super old, crappy devices. Doesn’t seem like it’s worth the hassle if you ask me, but then again, I don’t live in Britain. Plans start at £24 a month for the first three months that comes with the BT Hub and BT Hub phone along with either HTC device. After the initial three months you’ll be handcuffed to an 18-month contract that will set you back £29.99/month. Yikes. → Read More
Sony seems to be uncomfortable with the current HDD configuration of the PS3 or so it seems according to David Reeves, the SCEE head honcho. They did reduce the price of the PS3 by switching to a smaller capacity hard drive, but I don’t see anyone wanting to buy varying options from Sony if it were an option. I’ll gladly use one of my existing portables or buy a cheap 2.5-inch SATA to swap out because you know there’s going to be a premium on whatever Sony will try and push on you. Am I right? Of course I am. → Read More
Have you every played Wits and Wagers? It’s basically a trivia game that involves betting. You’re asked a question and you write down an answer (all of them are numerical). You then place it on a board and bet on the answer you think is closest to the truth — even if its not yours. It’s kind of like poker… with trivia. That said, the game is coming to XBox Live Arcade today and should be a corker. → Read More
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