Here’s a spicy rumor for you all to enjoy. Apparently RIM is planning some sort of BlackBerry TV store/service/thing, and may launch it as early as CTIA next week. (CTIA is like CES, but just for cellphone stuff; actually, a more accurate comparison would have been with Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress; thank you.) It’d be a subscription service, and the TV shows download over a Wi-Fi connection; it won’t use your data (3G if you’re lucky) connection at all → Read More
Yahtzee, of Zero Punctuation fame, is never wrong. In his crosshairs this week is Resident Evil 5, a delightful romp through T-Virus-ravaged (or whatever virus it is this time) Africa. You have a partner, a woman named Sheva (not to be confused with Andriy Shevchenko), who’s totally useless. → Read More
Populist outrage in 3…2…1. IBM is laying off 5,000 U.S. employees and “building its work force in India and other locations,” according to the WSJ. Foreign workers now make up 71% of IBMs workforce of 400,000. → Read More
We’re nearing the end of our long road trip but we still have a bunch of stuff to giveaway. This edition of Guess the MPG involves us driving from Las Vegas, NV to Pomona, CA. We are headed to a Garage of Tomorrow event with the Fusion Hybrid and this route should involve a both high speed freeway travel and stop/start LA traffic. So far the Fusion Hybrid has recorded an average MPG of 34.1 MPG over the last 2000 miles, but most of that was highway travel at slightly higher speeds than the posted limit. This 250 mile route will be a bit different. Guess our mileage correctly and you’ll win a JBL On Stage Micro iPod dock and some killer Harmon Kardon earphones. → Read More
Here’s a juicy rumor (if you’re a geek, this is good stuff): A source tells us that Google AppEngine, a platform for building and hosting web applications in the cloud, will begin letting developers write applications in Java in the near future. Until now only Python applications were supported. The announcement should come at the Google I/O conference in late May.
Java applications are extremely popular, particularly for business applications, and it is one of the internally supported languages at Google. In fact, late last year a startup called Stax Networks launched that billed itself as an “AppEngine for Java.” Don’t feel too bad for the startup, however, they’ve said from the beginning that they expected Google to enter the Java market sooner rather than later.
Java continues to be one of the most popular programming languages, and is a natural next step for Google. And AppEngine has been a highly successful product, at least from a press standpoint – the Obama Administration has embraced it along with all things Google. → Read More
Matthew Dominick made this clever Mario mash-up in which the plumber blows the warp whistle and ends up in Chicago, a city that probably already has a surfeit of mustachioed ethnic plumbers but could always use one more. → Read More
Your friends, family, and coworkers may have laughed at you in the past but nobody, and I mean NOBODY, will be laughing when you walk into the room with your PSP mounted around your waist, ready for some serious portable gaming. → Read More
So far we have traveled 2000 miles in the Ford Fusion Hybrid and we’re pleased to say that it’s been comfy. The seats are supportive, but still soft. The leg and headroom is sufficient, and it rides nicely. We have traversed high mountains, rolling hills, and endless flatlands while enduring high winds, rain, snow, and even some hail over the last week. But this Fusion kept on truck’n while maintaining some sort of order inside. Watch the video after the break for a complete run-down on the Fusion’s interior. → Read More
Bandai is behaving pretty strangely lately. 60-foot tall robots, outrageously expensive figures and now this: A gadget that allows you to relive the feeling of opening beer cans as many times as you want. I am doubting if this is really that exciting but the so-called Mugen Kan Beeru (Endless Can Beer) will go on sale in Japan in June [JP]. → Read More
It’s that time of the year again. We are pleased to announce the opening of business for the third annual TechCrunch50 event, to be held once again on September 14-15, 2009 in San Francisco, California. Last year we hosted 250 start-ups pitching to nearly 2,000 attendees, including 200 VCs, corporate buyers and angels and more than 150 members of the press. All the details are at TechCrunch50.com.
Attendees will enjoy an action-packed agenda, including pitches, panels, working breakfasts, lunch sessions, and after-parties at the beautiful San Francisco Design Center Concourse, with 125,000 square feet of networking space. As in previous years, launching startups will pay nothing to attend or present. One company will win $50,000 from the TechCrunch50 organizers. This year, we’ll have an Audience Choice Award and other recognitions too.
We’ll be providing a lot more information over the coming weeks and months, but here’s what you need to know now:
We’re putting a limited number of very early bird tickets on sale now for $995. Tickets will eventually be priced at $2,995, so buy them now if you know you are attending and get a great deal. We also have special pricing for students. → Read More
Busy day for the deadpool. Earlier today we had to drag a startup out of there, and now three others are tumbling into it (although one might still be saved in time).
Here’s a quick overview:
Popular game-centric file download service FileFront is closing down on March 30.
- Cruxy, a nearly 5-year old provider of marketing, monetization and analytics tools for digital creators ranging from film makers to music artists, is calling it quits too.
- Documentary-film.net, an under-the-radar video documentary hosting service with a small but loyal fan base, is unable to cough up the necessary money for decent hosting infrastructure.
(Read more details after the jump) → Read More
Two weeks ago, Bandai announced that it gives a 60-foot tall Gundam robot suit to the city of Tokyo, now the Japanese toy giant plans to build robot action figures that cost a whopping $20,000 apiece [JP]. The figures are based on an action anime called Mazinger Z (Tranzor Z in North America). → Read More
Security consultant Ade Barkah checked in with us to alert us to a couple of serious security issues associated to Google Docs, the web-based office software from the world’s most famous search engine company, giving a whole new meaning to its mission to make the world’s information universally accessible. On his blog on software, infrastructure and security, Barkah outlines no less than three issues that he discovered while investigating some potential security lapses.
Since he did the right thing by contacting Google about his findings (only to receive no response after five business days), we’re hoping that this article will help trigger the company’s engineering team to plug the holes asap. In case you missed it, earlier this month we uncovered some major privacy blunders going on with Google Docs, which the company later confirmed and fixed (we pinged them for this too).
Update: Google has published its stance on these issues on the official Docs blog (they don’t believe there’s a significant security risk)
So what’s up?
(read on after the jump) → Read More
Online shopping clubs along the lines of Vente Privee (which started in France) and Brand For Friends in Germany are spreading like wildfire across Europe – and no wonder. They are business models tailor-made for the recession, offering big discounts on designer goods among almost guaranteed buyers. They hit revenue almost from the word go and the jungle drums tell me that Vente-Privee is on course to deliver hundreds of millions in revenue this year alone. Now Russia’s KupiVIP is set to accelerate with a new injection of cash. → Read More
Not that you particularly care, but WMPowerUser is reporting that Zune functionality is coming to Windows Mobile 7 and will allow operators to charge phone users for music purchased in the Zune store, thereby opening the Zune experience up to a millions upon millions of unwitting customers. → Read More
There’s a reason you can’t really see the phone in this picture. Let’s start with a little gem from the press release for this new S-E phone, shall we? Maria knows that all eyes will be on her this season and thanks to her new T707; she can rest assured that whatever she does, she will look stylish, glamorous and be in control of her life with just the wave of a hand. Now, to extrapolate, what we are seeing here is the suggestion that Maria Sharapova, besides having a mean arm, knows enough about cellphones to tell if she – or, in actuality, her travel coordinator and assistant – needs a gesture-based cellphone. Wait, what’s that you say? You think S-E paid her to say all those nice things about this otherwise dud of a flip phone? Why you might be right. And there we find the flaw in S-E’s plan for world domination. → Read More
A new private equity fund has picked up what was left of Sneakerplay, the social network for sneaker fanatics that we deadpooled late last year when its founders pretty much abandoned the service (but kept the website online, hoping for a buyer to step up).
The fund, dubbed Keroch, has acquired the assets and IP of Sneakerplay and plans to grow the niche community site to a more relevant property. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Sneakerplay has always been a completely bootstrapped venture so we can safely assume the founders are happy with the sale, especially since they’ve basically moved on from the project some time ago.
What struck me is the fact that everyone seems to be doing their best to conceal the names of the people involved with the private equity fund. → Read More
