There are few things more satisfying than asking a search engine a question and immediately getting an answer. No weeding through Wikipedia entries. No sifting through spammy links. Just give me what I want to know. For years sites like Ask.com and Google have offered this feature, but only for purely factual information – things like “What is the longest river on Earth?”. But try asking “How do I bait a fishhook”, and you’re left to fend for yourself. Centrif, a new site that just launched in public beta, is looking to change this by offering a service that acts like a mix between a bookmarking service and an online reference guide. Instead of indexing the internet, Centrif relies on user submissions to determine the best answers to each question. As they find informative pages across the web, users are invited to share their discoveries (along with the questions they answer) with others. Users can add pages to Centrif’s index using a bookmarket, a Firefox extension, or through the site itself. Later on, users can ask questions at Centrif’s main site, which draws from these previously bookmarked pages. Questions that have been answered multiple times will have their links ranked according to their popularity, presumably allowing the most authoritative answers to rise to the top. Unfortunately, the site still has some obvious shortcomings that severely handicap its utility. For one, the search will only find a match if every word in a query is included in a result’s description. A search for “What is James Bond’s favorite car” would not pull up a page that had been tagged “What is James Bond’s car?”, because the word “favorite” wouldn’t match. The site doesn’t have a synonym dictionary either, which makes searching even more difficult. Beyond these search issues, Centrif simply doesn’t have many answers yet. The site is going to have serious trouble with the “chicken and the egg” problem – until it builds up a comprehensive database, few people will have a reason to use it. And it doesn’t have much to offer as a pure bookmarking tool either – there are plenty of mature competitors like delicious that have much more to offer. CrunchBase Information Centrif Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
http://www.gametrailers.com/remote_wrap.php?mid=35358 Oh boy. This holiday season will find the cross section of Wii owners and Star Wars fans flailing their arms about in a state of motion-sensed euphoria with the release of “Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels” by the same folks behind “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed,” Krome Studios (and LucasArts, of course). The game is set during the Clone Wars era, so we won’t get to play with classic characters like Luke Skywalker and company, but there will be destructible environments and throwing objects around through the use of Force powers. No hard and fast release date except for “this holiday season,” so let’s all be on our best behavior until then. Newsarama.com [via PC Mag] → Read More
Alas, I couldn’t make Mashed, the BBC hacker event over the weekend (largely due to wanting to see my wife and children in the breaks between my TechCrunch Euro Tour of European startups). However, the Guardian has done a great round-up of the projects presented during the competition. Alas, not many URLs are yet available to point to as yet. But the projects that won prizes and which also caught my eye are below. By all accounts (and the photos) Mashed was a great event from the BBC, and comes just in time for us to thrash out the ideas around the BBC’s data in two days time. Winners: TEAM BOB Parses BBC subtitles onto the cards in Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues. TWITTER ON TV An interactive TV app which displays RSS feeds as subtitles on your TV screen. MICHAEL STILLWELL Uses Fire Eagle to work out where you are and pushes Loney Planet tips on interesting things in the neighbourhood. CURRENTCOST LIVE Takes electricity monitors and publishes their information to the web – allowing you to compare energy consumption with friends. SCRIPTING ENABLED Makes the BBC Redux API accessible for blind people, so they can find the audio they want – a similar process is also shown for Slideshare and Powerpoint. NORTHENDERS Dubs a TV show into another language in real time: running the subtitle data through translation software and then uses speech synthesis to dub the video (which is delayed by 10 seconds for synching) Looks interesting: Jamie Munroe: Uses a music fingerprinting algorithm to match music you liked against stuff from BBC Redux. It can tell when DJs play the same song, or what tracks a TV show uses. Video mashup: Watch TV and talk about it online at the same time: watch any TV channel and enter an on-screen chat too. Bradley Freeman: Your ISP probably doesn’t support multicast – which helps networks save bandwidth by caching popular streams locally. This lets you do it even if they won’t let you. Phil Lewis: Download the h.264 streams from the iPlayer site, for people who use Macs or Linux. [Illegal surey? ] BYK: Looks at the audio on your computer and finds BBC radio shows and tracks for recommendation. → Read More
It is their music, after all. They’ve historically been pretty slow to take advantage of new avenues of distributing their music, probably because the world is already mostly saturated with it. But Beatles reps were in talks with both MTV Games and Activision, so you could be singing selections from their catalog in Guitar Hero or Rock Band some time soon. The thing is, it first has to be approved by the Apple Corps, made up of Paul, Ringo, Yoko Ono, and Olivia Harrison, and that’ll be a tough sell. I would imagine they’d be skeptical of the artistic worth of a game where their songs can be played any which way and modified far beyond their original state. Boy, if “I Feel Fine” was in the song list of one of these games, I might actually have to start playing. The drum parts should be pretty easy (take that, Ringo). → Read More
If you are coming to the “The TechCrunch BBC Debate: A Common Platform” this Wednesday night (June 25) then please take note of these important details. Attendees should report to Broadcasting House reception for a prompt start by 7.00pm sharp. BBC Broadcasting House is in Portland Place, London W1A 1AA. Because this is a highly sensitive security area then only people who registered for the (free) tickets will be allowed in (we are sold out). Sorry, but that’s just the way it is. The BBC kindly agreed to give us the venue, so we have to respect that. As it is about 80 people are coming, with members from the press, government and key players. The Panel: Tom Loosemore, Ofcom and former ‘head of Web 2.0′ at the BBC Jon Gisby, Channel 4’s first dedicated new media director Azeem Azahar, startups angel investor, ex-BBC, original proposer of the BBC Public License Tony Ageh, BBC New Media controller of internet James Cridland, Head of Future Media & Technology for BBC Audio & Music Interactive Jem Stone, Portfolio Executive, BBC new media Mike Butcher, Editor, TechCrunch UK Chair: Steve Bowbrick, entrepreneur, Blogger on BBC policy Background to the reasons why this debate has been organised: With Highfield gone the BBC must now open up While the BBC Fiddles Britain’s innovation burns → Read More
Ireland gets a startup shot in the arm this Thursday, June 26, when three (count’em 3) startup events happen in Dublin on the same day: OpenCoffee Dublin, Silicon Ireland and the TechCrunch / TechLudd meetup, which we have humourously named “CrunchLudd”. So head over to OpenCoffee Dublin first for a morning coffee, then go to the day-long event at the City North Hotel to hear guest speakers and network with VC’s, entrepreneurs and service providers. Finally head over to the TechCrunch/TechLudd event in the evening for drinks and chat with (me) Mike Butcher from TechCrunch UK. See you there! (And this is the last call for sponsors of the drinks at the CrunchLudd event btw, contact us today) → Read More
Due for release on September 2, Transformers on Blu-ray will no doubt entertain those of you who think giant robots fighting other just-as-big robots is “cool.” Paramount has said that the Blu-ray version will feature, in some capacity, BD Live content. Better still, this version will have Dolby TrueHD 5.1 sounds; the HD DVD version only had Dolby Digital Plus. And that’s the box art, identical to the HD DVD one. → Read More
Various tracks from the upcoming “Guitar Hero: Aerosmith” game have been trickling out, but we finally have the definitive list of the 40+ tracks that’ll be included when the title ships on June 29th. Of the notable non-Aerosmith tunes: King of Rock by Run DMC, She Sells Sanctuary by The Cult, Hard to Handle by the Black Crowes, Cat Scratch Fever by Ted Nugent, and Sex Type Thing by Stone Temple Pilots. → Read More
In this year’s Tokyo Toy Show, robots of all kinds and sizes were abundant, the majority of which I found to be very creepy. Especially Sega’s gigantic Golden Retriever is a genuinely scary “animal”. Below are some videos I shot of Sega robots during the show. Sega-Hasbro’s A.M.P music robot Sega’s kissing robot E.M.A. (it really can kiss people and looked amazing) Sega’s line of robo pets [JP] Sega’s Golden Retriever robot [JP] (on sale in Japan from September 26th for $300) → Read More
Barry Diller’s InterActiveCorp announced a minor enhancement to the demographic and behavioral ad targeting available across its sites today—something it is calling “Audience Cubes.” Advertisers can now run ads targeted at different demographic slices including 18 to 34-year olds, sports fans, homeowners, and parents on 26 IAC sites (Citysearch, Evite, Match.com, Ticketmaster, and others). Judging from the coverage the announcement received, though, you would think that IAC just launched an entirely new ad network. Some typical headlines: Diller Fashions IAC Ad Network(Ad Age). InterActiveCorp launches ad network, including for brands it’s ditching (Cnet). Separate, Yet Together: IAC Creates Ad Network With Its Split Businesses (paidContent). IAC To Bind Spin-off Companies In Ad Network (Silicon Alley Insider). Sounds good, except that IAC has been selling ads across this very same ad network for the past three years. It’s called IAC Advertising Solutions. Maybe nobody noticed. The company consolidated the ad serving technology from all its properties last year on Microsoft’s Atlas, and even before then was selling ads across the network. The news that this ad network will remain intact even once IAC splits into five separate companies is not really news. And the fact that IAC is just now turning on some extra behavioral targeting capabilities is not that big a deal. Every advertising network is doing that. Even Yahoo. (Photo by endolith). CrunchBase Information IAC Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Who’s ready for www.CrunchGear.xxx? The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers will vote later this week whether to “shake up,” as the Beeb puts it, the way the Internet works. Imagine an Internet with URLs in non-Roman letters, relaxed rules for those wanting a .com or .tv address, and, yes, the controversial .xxx top-level domain. ICANN had previously been against creating the triple x TLD because it could put it in the position of content regulator. In relaxing naming conventions, ICANN hopes to increase Web real estate, so to speak. Exciting times ahead, to be sure. → Read More
Looking for an inexpensive MP3 player to use for working out, showing off to tourists, and/or other general merriment? Buy.com has the SanDisk Sansa Shaker for the low, low price of $14.99, which includes free shipping. Being that it’s a SanDisk product, there’s an SD slot that you can use to expand upon the 1GB of storage that comes standard. The Shaker has a built-in speaker, two headphone jacks, and song changing is handled simply by shaking the device. You can also change tracks and regulate the volume by twisting the white bands on the top and bottom of the device. The regular price for the Shaker is around $50, so this deal might not last all that long. SanDisk Sansa Shaker 1GB [Buy.com] via FatWallet → Read More
http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf?enablejs=true&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcrunchgear%2Eblip%2Etv%2Frss&file=http%3A%2F%2Fblip%2Etv%2Frss%2Fflash%2F1022982%3Freferrer%3Dblip%2Etv%26source%3D1&showplayerpath=http%3A%2F%2Fblip%2Etv%2Fscripts%2Fflash%2Fshowplayer%2Eswf We’ll have to wait approximately 10 months a few months before the next installment of COD is released, but we can, at least, drool over the first trailer in the meantime. It was rumored to take place in the South Pacific, but if you listen closely enough you’ll hear a few Japanese words/phrases being muttered. Other things to look forward to are co-op and the ability to voice commands to your troops. Patiently waiting. → Read More
It seems a video of the Ocean 2 was up last night, but that’s clearly not the case now since we can only provide a screen shot. Not a whole lot to glean from the Heliocity message board, but it appears the d-pad is touch sensitive and the “Helio” is backlit. Looking forward to this upgrade. → Read More
Nokia’s acquisition of Plazes today, the Germany location startup, will do one or both of two things. It will mean other mobile startups with location as a feature will be looked at in a more favourable light. The main startup in the UK in this arena – currently – is Rummble, but there are an increasing number of others, such as WeGlu, Moblog and Buddyping. It may also mean that the battle for location-based services has reached a peak, with startups now having to think about location being a “given” and then looking to create less commoditised services, like filtering, as Rummble does. My industry sources are telling me that this was a smart acquisition for Nokia, which needed to have a consumer based offering outside the rigid maps infrastructure they have, since the purchase last year of Navteq. There is also a local story here. The Plazes office is in Berlin, physically close to the Gate 5 people, and we know from good authority that Gate 5 people are highly respected on the Berlin scene. It’s therefore likely that they had a lot to do with the acquisition thinking inside Nokia as they know the guys from Plazes. From what we know about Nokia, the purchase of Plazes fits in with their strategy in terms of context and location and what to do with it. Put together the Ad system they have, and they control a strong section of the mobile ecosystem from ad generation, delivery through branded channels, with good profile information about the user, especially since most new handsets from Nokia now have GPS built in. CrunchBase Information Plazes Rummble Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
If you walk into a bar and see this robotic arm situated at one end of an air hockey table drinking a Miller High Life with a cigarette hanging from its lip yelling “Who’s got next?!", don’t, under any circumstances, play against it for money. It’ll beat you pretty badly. Politely offer to play a gentleman’s game and if the arm refuses, just walk away. The robot was developed by a company called NuVation and recently won a People’s Choice Award at the Freescale Technology Forum 2008 Americas conference. You might not actually see this apparatus in your local hangout anytime soon, as it requires a pretty elaborate air hockey table setup (sensors, a computer, and so forth) but maybe you could build one of your own as a weekend project, eh? via Crave → Read More
The next version of Adobe Photoshop, which may not be called CS4, and may not come out in October, will indeed have a new user interface, at least on the Mac version. The big change is this element called the application frame, as seen in the above screenshot. Reaction to the new UI element has been mixed, including early protestations by an Adobe gentleman, who has since been won over by the new design. But for all of this, know that the new UI element is completely optional. If you don’t wanna use it, then don’t. Problem solved! The reason behind the new UI element, Adobe says, is to achieve consistency between its different products. An enviable goal, yes, but one that should have been properly explained before the peanut gallery went into full-on freak out mode. → Read More
Meet the new Nokia, completely different from the old Nokia. Well, that’s what its executive vice president for entertainment and communities wants you to think. See, while Nokia is content creating genuinely good cellphones, some inside the company think it’s time to move in a different direction, namely entertainment. Hence, services like Ovi and deals with records labels. No one ever went broke marketing base, silly entertainment to the everyday Joe. Most interesting is where Nokia sees its efforts going in the future. From your cellphone, you’d be able to order movie tickets, rent a hotel room, and post photos to Facebook, all from a central hub and with the push of a single button. Sounds neat. At least Nokia’s trying something new, and not clinging onto the Old Ways like some companies and organizations seem to do. → Read More
We just launched TechCrunchIT, our newest property, with editors Steve Gillmor and Nik Cubrilovic. The site is focused on the enterprise tech space – all the software, technologies, standards, platforms, etc. that help companies do their thing, and form the building blocks of the products we feature on TechCrunch, MobileCrunch and our other blogs. TCIT will be a lot like TechCrunch in editorial and content style – a range of enterprise-related news and analysis including applications, open standards, platforms, cloud computing, microenterprises, customer experience, legacy enterprise, social media, information management and software among other subjects. They aim to promote an understanding of emerging and existing enterprise technologies and products and to analyze their commercial, social, and consumer impact. Make sense? If it’s not clear where the line is between TechCrunch and TechCrunchIT, perhaps my muffler analogy will help. A frequent debate on the Gillmor Gang is over the importance, or at least the interestingness, of end user/consumer products (think YouTube) v. the technologies that allow those products to exist (in YouTube’s case, Adobe Flash). I personally think the YouTube’s of the world are more interesting, and I refer to those products as “Ferarris.” All the technology that goes into making those Ferarris I refer to as “mufflers” (the enterprise guys hate that, which is why I keep doing it). Basically, TechCrunchIT is a blog about the mufflers. And Steve and Nik are going to do their best to keep you entertained while reporting every important development in the muffler market. Quite often there will be cross coverage between the blogs when we think a particular story will interest both sets of readers. Also, Steve and Nik will continue to occasionally write here on TechCrunch. You may even see me hop over to TechCrunchIT once in a while to write a post or two. We have two terrific sponsors right out of the gate – Microsoft and Sun. Thanks to both of them for believing in us as we get started with TechCrunchIT. There are still a few bugs on the site, so bear with us as the paint dries and everything settles down. But if you hurry over there now, you’ll see some live coverage of the Salesforce/Google event in San Francisco today. → Read More
O2 has confirmed that unsubsidized iPhones will be available in Apple retail stores, O2 shops and Carphone warehouses for roughly £350 ($685) sans contract. Ouch. → Read More
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