Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Twitter appears to have an unassailable lead in users and their resultant Follow clouds. Though Track is dead and IM is postponed indefinitely, the service has added a political track page with a company-selected keyword cluster around the political race. The result: a rapid flow of unmoderated comments with no social graph or… → Read More
This enormous and allegedly unsolicited blog entry by an “ordinary Joe developer” (is he related to the plumber?) details some of the under-the-hood stuff that’s going on with Windows 7 development. Although Ballmer has described 7 as being “Windows Vista with clean-up in user interface [and] improvements in performance,” this guy seems to think it’s a little… → Read More
If you scoff at Monster Cable’s prices, please don’t keep reading – you’ll have a stroke. This Ethereal HDMI cable has been submitted to DPL Labs with the hopes and dreams to be the longest Class C, Level 5 HDMI cable which means that it can handle the maximum throughput on the scale. This is similar to the testing that Monster Cable showed off at CEDIA ’08. The… → Read More
It’s Elevator Pitch Friday, which means another startup has created a video that’s worth showing you. This week’s presentation comes from Marcellus, a startup that wants to dramatically reduce the cost for companies to deliver video on their websites.
Marcellus wants to make delivering video cheap, easy, and on demand, by offering… → Read More
Sponsors enable the TechCrunch team to keep writing about the things that you care about. So we wanted to take a moment and thank them, let you know about two great conferences that are coming up, and to announce exciting new ways to support TechCrunch. → Read More
Our writer Doug Aamoth is currently in protective custody after the High Fructose Corn Syrup Council sent an email to us informing us of “incorrect” “facts” about “deadly” and “obesity-causing” high fructose corn syrup. Their beef? He wrote: If you drink a fair amount of soda, carbonated water, tonic, and the like, then the Home Soda Maker is a… → Read More
Gotta have an ominous-looking photo to accompany stories like this Do you remember how, earlier in the year, New York’s attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, set his sights on ISPs that provided Usenet access to their users? Cuomo argued that Usenet is a safe haven for child pornography and that it’s up to ISPs to shut off the spicket. We’ve discussed this at length, but now… → Read More
You may have noticed when we looked at the top 10 tech items being sold on Amazon the other day that there were no Vista-based laptops on there. That’s because the Vista laptops are more like top 25 material. After all, the high system requirements have prevented many people with desktops from making the switch; so it’s natural that notebooks would have an even lower pickup rate. → Read More
Getting live audio into your PC isn’t very hard – most cards have an audio in that works just fine. But what if you want lots of quarter-inch jacks, XLR, and a bunch of knobs? Well, then you need the POD Studio line from Line 6. Line 6 makes amps, recorders, and modelers for musicians and this $280 device, the UX2, isn’t amazingly expensive and should run some good audio through… → Read More
Jaxtr, a startup that offers VoIP serivce as well as a social network, has laid off 13 of its employees and has been added to the layoff tracker. As of June 2008 the company had 35 employees (we’ve asked the company for the current count). Update: The company now has 30 full time employees.
CEO Konstantin Guericke says that the company is well positioned to weather the economic downturn, as… → Read More
Is this a sweet-looking doodad or what? Blu-Ray recording just got a lot sexier. I don’t think it’s, well, real yet, but it’s real enough that it has a price ($289 for a player, $389 for a recorder) and a weight (360g). I’m surprised they can make it so compact, but then again I’m completely ignorant of the engineering — and of course there’s no size… → Read More
For many students, the academic portion of college consists of a four (or more) year quest to find the easiest professors on campus. College may be a time to learn new things, but graduate schools don’t tend to care how much you’ve broadened your horizons – to them, GPA and test scores are all that matter.
There have been a number of popular sites that ask students to rate their professors to… → Read More
Ótimo! Impressionante! Outras palavras importantes! É como descrever este vídeo, que mostra o que sucede quando umas pessoas não têm nada que fazer. Há 15 computadores que estaão sincronizado para ter um screensaver fora deste mundo. CrunchGear, celebrando multiculturalismo desde 2006. via Dvice → Read More
So much for the new, friendly China. Apparently the “Great Firewall of China” has been replaced, following a brief interval during the Olympics when internet restrictions were eased. Now the bricks are being re-laid, and with fewer gaps to boot: they are now requiring internet cafes to photograph all customers. Not quite to the extent suggested by my inflammatory photoshop job up… → Read More
Will Wright, the brains behind Spore, Civilization and The Sims, finally spoke his mind yesterday about the now infamous Spore-DRM brouhaha. It’s a strange reaction, I think. It [the DRM] was something I probably should have tuned into more. It was a corporate decision to go with DRM on Spore… I think one of the most valid concerns about it was you could only install it so many times. → Read More
In response to our post on Tweeter shutting down, a brave Tweeter employee dropped us a line: I’m a Tweeter Employee, and let me tell you firsthand, our management is 100% responsible for our failure. They sit in the Glass Palace up in Canton MA, where it seems every two weeks they change the companies direction. Last week we were supposed to be Crestron Dealers who gave $60K estimates without… → Read More
I like Sonicare brushes. They don’t tear up your gums – too badly – and they make funny noises when you brush your teeth. Philips updated their Sonicare line with this interesting new system which is much more like traditional motorized toothbrushes although it does offer considerably more vibration and three buzz settings – regular, gentle, and the erotically-themed… → Read More
Like an iceberg, there’s more to the recent 2.50 firmware update for the PS3 than we initially saw. Like how you can now input a Divx VOD Registration Code, which you’ll need if you ever want to watch certain upcoming video-on-demand movies. Other odds and ends include mosquito noise reduction, chrome upsampling and 50Hz video output. Sorta makes you pine for simpler times, U R NOT E… → Read More
The Goblin King looked down from his throne at his subjects, cowered in terror, arrayed before him. “Who among you can slay me!” he cried and no one dared to answer. Then, from the back of the Great Goblin Hall, came a lone, quiet voice. “I do,” said Sir Mousekin of Briarbrush. He stepped forth and pulled from his wee belt the Mitey Utility Knife by Stanley ($3 for the… → Read More
I’m tempted to take this study with a grain of salt, since they’re drawing far-reaching results from a simple poll, when there are actual market indicators they could have used (at greater cost and trouble) that would have given a more comprehensive picture of the industry. Still, for what it’s worth, the research they did indicates that a third of mobile phone users played games… → Read More
After Silicon Valley woke up to the economic crisis last week and VCs rang the alarm bells, startups are starting to heed the call and tighten their belts for a long winter. As the slide above from Sequoia Capital illustrates, belt-tightening now may be the most prudent thing a startup can do. While nobody likes layoffs, least of all the employees losing their jobs, it increases a startup’s… → Read More
The layoff train continues: Zillow CEO Richard Barton reports 42% year over year visitor increases and 25% layoffs. The last time we updated Crunchbase Zillow had 155 employees, so it sounds like at least 35 former employees are now looking for a job.
Richard’s blog post:
This week we are reducing our workforce by 25%. This was an incredibly painful decision for me and the leadership team, but… → Read More
Ready to put your hands all up on Sprint’s version of the HTC Touch Pro on its previously announced release date of October 19th? Weeeell, it turns out you’re going to have to wait a bit longer. After hearing rumors of launch delays, the folks over at Crave decided to give Sprint a shout. Their response: Sprint expects to slightly delay launch of the Touch Pro by HTC to ensure we have… → Read More
The epic struggle against illegal immigration continues, as American authorities turn to technology to help them secure the homeland. Specifically, they’ve turned to drive-through X-ray portals to help detect both illegal immigrants and unwanted matériel. Of course, there’s the predictable conflict between privacy rights advocates and government officials. You know, “you’re… → Read More
LG is displaying the latest in reflective display technology with its 15-inch double-sided model. This particular demonstration model has a pixel count of 512 x 384 with a contrast ratio of 14:1. No word on what this will eventually become, but since reflective displays tend to draw their backlight from ambient light sources, I would assume something with advertising. One day we might see… → Read More
A group of researchers at the University of Osaka managed to develop a super-small “pen” that is able to write or draw by arranging individuals atoms on metallic surfaces. As an example, the word “Si” was inscribed on a semiconductor surface, manipulating silicon atoms (see picture). The process took 90 minutes to complete. The letters are sized at just 2×2 nanometers… → Read More
I’m not sure who this wild man-child is, but his love of phallic humor is definitely worth about 2 minutes of your time. This is a one-trick joke – it’s just Pluto pleasuring himself and then Mickey screwing a car – but feel free to watch all the way through. I just worry about Mike Mozart here: Where does he keep all his toys? And why is he so happy? And why does he see… → Read More
The Casio Oceanus OCWP500 watch might appeal to geeks and ocean-bound divers alike. The solar-powered, atomic, titanium, auto calendar, chronograph watch strikes a chord with my inner gadget-loving self, but the overall design doesn’t float my boat – but it might yours. → Read More
Remember that “affordable” touchscreen LG had in the works? As it makes the strides through the development process, it’s been granted a name a bit more consumer friendly than the model number. Further proving that the mobile industry name tank is running low, the KP500 has been redubbed the “LG Cookie”. Seriously. The Cookie. The main push behind this product was… → Read More
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