May 15: next08, Hamburg next08 is on May 15, 2008 at the Prototyp museum in Hamburg. The main theme will be “get realtime”, taking care of the challenge that customers are communicating in real-time but companies do not. Together with DLD in Munich it has become Germany’s most important New Media event. Confirmed speakers as include Anil Hansjee (Google), JP Rangaswami (British Telecom) and Lisa Sounio (Dopplr). May 21st: Startup 2.0, Barcelona StartUp2.0 is a competition of European web 2.0 sites whose objectives are to promote and reward the European startups that work in the field of “2.0″ technologies. 21-23 May: Thinking Digital The Thinking Digital conference will take on an eclectic range of technology-based topics that have (or soon will have) a profound effect upon the way we work and live: from the future of media and making far better use of technology, to our obsession with happiness and creating a cure for ageing. Jun 10: Being-Digital Being-Digital is a UK event, in London for UK entrepreneurs, executives, and investors. A number of startups will be pitching on the day (interest declared: I’ll be introducing them). The bulk of the speakers, demo companies etc. are UK based, such as Brent Hoberman of mydeco, but will also feature Loïc Le Meur, founder of Seesmic. The interesting thing about the pitches is that they will be filmed, and made available afterwards, with the winning company announced on June 19th. Also of note: Jun 11: Berlin TechCrunch Meetup Jun 12: TMT.communities’08, Warsaw Creating products and services around internet & mobile communities Other events: May 19: GeekUp Preston May 20: NESTA: The Innovation Edge Conference 2008 May 22: GeekUp Leeds May 24: BarCamp NorthEast May 26: London Web Week Opening Party May 27: NMK Beers & Innovation: Coming of Age May 29: @media 2008 (London) May 31: BarCamp London 4 June 6th: Seedcamp Paris Jun 10: GeekUp Manchester Jun 13: Fuel Jun 21: Mashed Jul 2: GeekUp Sheffield Jul 16: (Irish) Open Coffee BBQ → Read More
Office productivity suite Zoho removed the need to create an account to use their services today – you can now log in to any of their products using a Google or Yahoo account. Sign in is completed via Yahoo’s and Google’s authentication APIs. I asked Zoho evangelist Raju Vegesna why they don’t just adopt OpenID to handle authentications instead. He says they will, soon, but also want to integrate directly with the most requested third parties to address users immediate needs (and it is still a pain to log in with OpenID). Vegesna also says they may integrate directly with other third parties, such as Microsoft and Facebook, in the future as well based on user requests. The goal, Vegesnu says, is to get users to try Zoho with as little hassle as possible: “One thing we noticed is, when users try both Zoho and Google, more than 70% of them prefer Zoho. It made sense for us to do this. We want more users to try our apps.” This certainly accomplishes that. In a matter of a couple of clicks, new users can get in to Zoho and start creating and editing documents. My guess is this works out well for them. CrunchBase Information Zoho Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
A week ago Wired Magazine voiced its displeasure over our syndication partnership with the Washington Post. Wired’s Betsy Schiffman wrote “We’ve got nothing against TechCrunch, but it seems crazy-crazy to us that the Washington Post, a paper known for the sort of reporting that can take down U.S. presidents, is publishing content written by a dude who invests in the companies he writes about. But what do we know.” When I read this I thought “WTF?” (with an emphasis on the “F”). Wired is a competitor to TechCrunch, but we’ve been on friendly terms with them for years now. Editor-In-Chief (on the print side) Chris Anderson and I were on Charlie Rose the same night a month ago, and Chris wrote some nice words about me in his post about the show. Wired’s Fred Vogelstein also wrote an awesome profile of TechCrunch in 2007. So back to Wired’s slap at us. They seem to be concerned that I have personally invested in a handful of startups (all disclosed here) and we occasionally cover those startups and their competitors. And even though I disclose those relationships, Wired’s position is that the Washington Post should terminate the syndication relationship with us. I responded to the article as succinctly as possible here (written after a night of heavy drinking at the Time 100 party) and then followed up with additional Twitter messages suggesting we hold a Wired burning party. I chose Twitter specifically for this response to make sure Wired knew I wasn’t happy with the post, but I specifically didn’t write about it on TechCrunch or even CrunchNotes to keep things relatively calm (I have 16,000 or so followers there, v. TechCrunch’s audience of 3 million or so plus feed subscribers). I also then let the matter drop, as I had made my point. Emails to people I know at Wired went unanswered. Schiffman emailed me on May 9 with further attacks and a request for comments and details but I didn’t respond. Frankly, she’s proven herself to be a troll, and so anything I write might as well be public here on TechCrunch. And, as I said, I let the matter drop. But then today Schiffman wrote a follow up article on the same issue. No new facts, she just wanted to reiterate how much she dislikes the partnership, I guess. And if anyone thinks this is just something between Schiffman → Read More
Today’s Top Posts: HBO confirms iTunes sales Swisscom: 32GB 3G iPhone will come in silver, black, or white Uwe Boll would love to direct a GTA movie! Canon’s Selphy CP770 printer is, for some reason, shaped like a bucket Otterbox rugged case for Samsung Q1 Ultra UMPC Microsoft’s ‘Worldwide Telescope’ now available Video: sneak peek of upcoming Xbox 360 titles Creative goes official with Flip clone, Vado Xbox “Lips” on its way, whatever it is 13-year-old would rather play Halo with hooker than get laid, will be next 40-year-old virgin → Read More
Restaurant review sites have long been plagued by polarized opinions – most of the people that take the time to write something have either loved a place or hated it. These sites also have to deal with reviewers who share their opinions, regardless of if they’ve ever visited the restaurant in question. Today OpenTable, the web-enabled restaurant reservation manager, has introduced a new set of restaurant rankings that they hope will skirt most of these issues. The new rankings, called “Diners’ Choice”, are based off of surveys that OpenTable distributes through email to recent diners. OpenTable says that visitors to their site tend to take a certain amount of pride in food, which will motivate them to complete the reviews, even when they might not feel particularly strongly about a restaurant. While this assertion is debatable, OpenTable does offer something that is unique to the review space: confirmation that every review came from someone who actually dined at the restaurant. This is made possible by OpenTable’s unique reservation system, which can monitor which patrons have actually been seated. Unfortunately, OpenTable is currently only displaying the results of these reviews as ranked lists – there is no way to see what each individual reviewer had to say (only the restaurants themselves receive this data). This is surprising given the site’s purportedly increased accuracy, and it may lead many readers to turn to more thorough review sites like Yelp instead. CrunchBase Information OpenTable Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Given the popularity of FriendFeed, it’s surprising that we haven’t seen many memetrackers appear for the site. Today French developer Michael Mortchelewicz has unveiled FriendFeedLinks, which attempts to fill that void. Compared to other memetrackers like TweetMeme and RSSMeme, FriendFeedLinks has a very spartan interface. There are no summaries or discussions to speak of – just a link to each story and an expandable list that shows which members have linked to it. Users can search for keywords to filter the stories, but this is only helpful if the desired word is included in the story’s title. FriendFeedLinks is a good start – it lets users quickly find popular stories and serves as a nice alternative to Digg. But unless it integrates more features in the near future, it probably won’t see much use. CrunchBase Information FriendFeedLinks Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Facebook will announce soon on its developer blog that it’s working on a Jabber/XMPP interface for Facebook Chat. The interface will allow users to talk to their Facebook friends using any Jabber-enabled desktop client. It will also enable Facebook users with such desktop clients to see which of their friends are online, view friends’ profile pictures, and set their status messages. This will all be possible after users authorize their applications to securely connect and communicate with Facebook Chat. This is a welcome, albeit not terribly surprising, move on Facebook’s part. The company has recently shown a great willingness to open their data up to other applications and web services. And it’s smart for them to stay ahead of the data portability curve, since they’ll be able to maintain more control over just how data flows in and out of their system (it’s bound to happen anyway). CrunchBase Information Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Nothing points out the flaws in a mobile browser like attempting to quickly open it up and run a search for something. If you’re using the carrier’s default WAP homepage, the built in search often doesn’t search past things that will make the carrier money. If you’re trying to use a standard search engine, the results take forever to load and any elements of the page that render correctly are little miniature blessings. Yahoo’s oneSearch is one of the few search engines that manages to take away the massive suck factor from the process. Rather than just dumping a list of results on you, it uses your queries (and, if suitable, your location) to figure out what you’re looking for and provide answers directly. For example: Entering a recently released movie title will precede the results with local showtimes, while “NBA” will lead with scores for any active NBA games. Canada’s largest carrier, Rogers Wireless, is the first in North America to recognize this. In addition to Yahoo’s mobile site and the Yahoo! Go application, all Rogers/Fido customers can now use oneSearch straight off the default Rogers WAP portal. For those of us in the US, our rep at Yahoo says the company expects AT&T to integrate oneSearch into their portal sometime in the near future. → Read More
Just reading the stats on this, it looks like MSI’s subnotebook, the Wind (unrelated to the Air) is possibly the best value for a computer on the market today. Check it out, for about $500 you get all this: 10″ LCD, 80GB HDD, a gig of RAM, 1.3MP webcam, 5 hour battery life, weighs in at 2.6lb and built around Intel’s new Atom processor. I don’t usually just plug stuff like this, but it really looks like a great power-to-dollar ratio you’re getting here, and MSI is a good brand. You can even choose Linux instead of XP, though your hardware choices are more limited. MSI US’s manager says: We designed the Wind to offer mobile consumers all the features of bulkier more expensive notebooks, but with a sleeker lightweight footprint and an affordable sub $500 price point. Sounds like the usual PR nonsense, but I think they might have actually done it. Keep an eye on MSI Mobile’s site for more details. → Read More
Those of you with Psystars running Leopard might want to hot-foot it to Psystar’s website to download some important fixes. They activate Time Machine and patch many other specific errors. Since Leopard wasn’t ever meant for non-Mac computers, it makes sense that there is much patching needed. → Read More
http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/emp/2_2_2046/player.swf I’ve been waiting for this one. The BBC just released the video of the drunken Darth Vader attacking the wannabe Jedi kids with a crutch. God bless you, BBC. → Read More
After missing their original May planned release date, the much-ridiculed Gizmondo portable gaming system is aiming for a late 2008 launch. Among the improvements touted: a separate graphics card from Nvidia and Windows CE 6. Sounds like a powerhouse. And why should the gaming community pay any attention at all to this ridiculous device? Why should they not focus their interest on other, more open, homebrew-focused devices like the GP2X and Pandora? Or perhaps the DS, for which the hacking possibilities are endless? Why should we care about this failed product from a calamity of a company? I don’t know — they didn’t ask that question. → Read More
If you’re going to have to live in a Nanny State with Big Brother-like cameras all over the place, why not make the best of it? The Get Out Clause, a British indie band, did just that, playing their song paper in front of 80 various cameras around England and then requesting the tapes from the cameras as part of a Data Protection Act. They then edited the footage together into this just amazing video. Way to go, blokes. → Read More
MySpace has informed us that on Monday it was awarded $234 million in statutory damages, the largest anti-spam sum ever made under CAN-SPAM and apparently ever under any law. This is also the first time damages have been awarded under the California Anti Phishing Act. The case was won against two notorious spammers, Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines. Wallace earned the nicknames “Spamford” and “spam king” for having sent as many as 30 million spam messages per day during a period of time in the 1990s. Wallace and Rines spammed MySpace by creating their own accounts and stealing the passwords of others. They then went on to mass message users an estimated 735,925 times. Each of these messages warrant up to $300 in damages under the 2003 federal anti-spam law CAN-SPAN because they were conducted “willingly and knowingly”. The case was brought against Wallace on March 23, 2007 and subsequently against Rines on September 25, 2007 when it was learned the two were working together. MySpace has yet to collect the actual award and may very well not ever do so; it appears as though they don’t even know where two spammers are (the judgment was made in their absence after they failed to show up to court). Even so, they are charging ahead with another pending case against Scott Richter who also used stolen passwords to spam MySpace users. The News Corporation-owned social network issued has issued the following public statement: MySpace has zero tolerance for those who attempt to act illegally on our site. The Federal District Court in Los Angeles awarded MySpace $233,777,500 under the federal CAN-SPAM Act and $1,500,000 under the California anti-phishing statute. User engagement is up 32 percent year over year while spam is significantly decreasing, proving efforts like this are working. We thank the court for serving justice upon defendants Wallace and Rines and we remain committed to punishing those who violate the law and try to harm our members. We’re told that the second largest award under CAN-SPAM was much a lower figure: $2.9 million, paid by ValueClick to the FTC in just March of this year. Additional details for this MySpace case can be found through the Associated Press. Below is the court order: http://documents.scribd.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=2963483&access_key=key-1qtpohj8taca4847g84j&page=&version=1&auto_size=true Cort Order – Upload a doc Read this doc on Scribd: Cort Order CrunchBase Information MySpace Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
The above photo is NOT the actual drum kit that’ll come with Guitar Hero IV but — but! — the drums that do come with the game will feature two cymbals. What a crazy idea, huh? My Rock Band drums don’t have cymbals. Once again, I have no choice but to harness the wisdom of Natalie Imbruglia when I say “I’m torn.” You’ll be able to find more details in the June issue of Game Informer magazine, according to Primo Technology’s blog, who says that “It is unknown whether or not the Guitar Hero IV instruments and Rock Band instruments will be cross-compatible.” Guys, just make everything compatible. Quit playing games with my heart. It’s not fair. via Gizmodo → Read More
Intermediads is a new service just launched in closed beta. Developed by serial entreprenuer Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, it’s based around the idea of 125×125 advertising buttons. So that’s it? Not quite. These small rectangles give readers and advertisers very little information. They are basically pretty useless. So the idea is you hover over the ad and a small grey border appears, just like on a Flickr profile. If you then click on the border a small layer comes up with a few options. Check out The Next Web blog and hover over the ads for a live demo. After testing they hope to open the service up for other blogs to use, suggesting this could be a new type of ad network. I don’t believe the idea is original – but since many blogs run this size of button ad and ads generally are annoying because you have to click away, and ad network based soley on this format could well appeal to blog readers and publishers. If I didn’t have to click away to a new page I might be more inclined to see what an advertiser was about. In fact, I wouldn’t mind advertising nearly so much. → Read More
All the craziness going on with XP’s SP3 and AMD processors is complex, but Microsoft wants you to know it’s not their fault, it’s HP’s fault, among others. It turns out that the OEMs, including HP, have been installing the wrong sysprep before XP, using an sysprep designed for Intel’s platform. So it’s not a Microsoft issue, or an AMD issue, it’s a configuration issue. There’s no patch yet, though Microsoft is working on the problem. We’ll let you know when there’s a fix. → Read More
Instopix (Instant Messenger Topic Pictures) is a program, currently only for MSN users, that shows related pictures for their conversations. It’s an early alpha by 21-year-old Luke Stanley who has spun it out of his startup ThoughtTrail. What Instopix does is pretty cool. While you are having an IM conversation with a fiend on MSN Messenger, if your contact talks about something like a film, the Instopix plugin will bring up information about the film with links, even video. Here’s a demo. The program is a part of a viral strategy for ThoughtTrail, a Semantic Desktop and Semantic Web platform. ThoughtTrail is a reusable libary with functions like the ability to quickly do phrase-finding and web searches, achieved with a plugin. The main code is cross-platform, Python coded. So, Stanley – who calls his project a “flirtation with Visual Language” – thinks he could have a shot at Mike Arrington’s email problem, such as a creating a Firefox plugin to get all his unread Gmail messages and import them to ThoughtTrail to provide visual cues, summarisation and cross-referencing to see if he already knows an emailer on Facebook or LinkedIn. I don’t know if it would work, but it sounds plausible enough. The next version of Instopix (not yet released), has microblogging straight from conversations: as in, tell a friend something, then “send to blog”. CrunchBase Information ThoughtTrail Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
A little birdie told me over the weekend a few details regarding the Helio and Virgin Mobile merger rumor that surfaced early last week. Sky Dayton, Helio’s former CEO and now Chairman, had a meeting with Best Buy during CTIA where I’m told Dan Schulman, CEO of VM, was also present. This is a big deal because Helio is making the play for mass distribution which adds a bit of fodder to the rumors about a merger. → Read More
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