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
A few things went unannounced during Nintendo’s GDC keynote this morning and the biggest news on the DSi front is the confirmation of 1000 free DSi points if you purchase the third generation DS within the first six months of launch. That’s quite a bit of free swag considering DSiWare games and apps will be divvied up into four price tiers: free, 200 points, 500 points and 800+ points. The DSi point to $ ratio is 100 to 1, so 1000 points is a considerable amount of free booty. So be sure to pick up your DSi between April 5th and October 5th if you want to cash in. → Read More
Today, WD announced that their entire My Book line of external hard drives has been bumped up to 2TB of storage. The line is vast and caters to young and old, PC or Mac. The revamped line of 2TB drives includes: My Book Studio Edition, My Book Mac Edition, My Book Home Edition and My Book Essential Edition. Prices range from $329.99 to $379.99. → Read More
rPath, a company that specializes in technology that simplifies the distribution and consumption of applications via virtual appliances is making some interesting moves in cloud computing. Basically, rPath helps business close the gap between applications and operations by ensuring the delivery of application deployment quickly and inexpensively. Now rPath is using this technology to help enterprises and organizations deploy their applications in the cloud. rPath’s technology allows applications to be deployed and managed in a variety of cloud environments, including Amazon’s EC2 servers. But rPath’s technology also works in private clouds. In fact, rPath is helping the U.S. Department of Energy manage and operate applications in a private cloud environment. rPath gives scientists working for the DOE a way of deploying applications as virtual machines in the cloud. As governments slowly heading towards putting data in the clouds, rPath is helping make sure that applications actually work in this environment rPath recognizes the significance of the cloud in the enterprise space and formed the “Cloud Computing Adoption Model” to provide businesses with a game plane for achieving long-term benefits from adopting a cloud computing infrastructure. The five levels of cloud computing adoption are shown and explained below: rPath is definitely doing some fascinating things for businesses looking to efficiently deploy applications in the cloud. And the company is committed to helping businesses understand the cloud and its implications. Here’s a nifty video rPath made to help people understand cloud computing: CrunchBase Information rPath Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Viral video tracking and measurement firm Visible Measures has closed a $10 million series C round of funding, led by Northgate Capital. Existing investors Mohr Davidow and General Catalyst also participated, bringing the total capital the company has raised since launch to $29 million. The last time it raised money was in January, 2008.
Visible Measures lets both ad agencies and big video publishing sites on the Web track viewership and engagement with videos across the Web. Ad agencies can measure the effectiveness of specific video ad campaigns, and publishers can see which of their videos are being played and passed around the most. → Read More
Like Portal, Fez will be forcing you to wrap your mind around a completely different way of navigating the world. I’m losing it just watching this trailer, and I’ve been following its development for some time now. Whatever system this ends up coming out on, that’s the one I’m going to buy. Hopefully it’s all three plus the PC. → Read More
Web chat service Meebo, always innovative with advertising, is trying out something fairly aggressive: full takeover ads that show a persistent advertisement in the background.
The company says that they already got 1% or higher click throughs on existing ads units on the site, which included rollovers at the bottom of the screen and another unit right in the middle. But the new units actually take over the entire background of the site, meaning users are literally slammed with the messaging. They are presented with an option of removing the add with a click.
And the users don’t seem to mind at all.
Founder/CEO Seth Sternberg wrote a blog post today on the new ads and asked for user feedback. Most of the 100+ comments to the post are very positive. Example comments: → Read More
In case you’re stuck at work or away from your precious Wii, Doug was kind of enough to take this quick video of today’s update to the Wii Menu System. Enjoy. → Read More
Douglas did a fine job detailing what OnLive is yesterday and today we’re bringing you a hands-on demo of the cloud gaming service from the GDC show floor. The chap who gave us the demo does a find job of explaining how OnLive works in case you missed yesterday’s post. Sit tight and watch Devin suck at GRID.
We questioned one of the OnLive developers about possible bandwidth issues because of the nature of this service, but he says that ISPs like Comcast are fully aware and on-board with what OnLive is doing. It worked well in this isolated situation but we’ll have to wait and see what happens when it hits the market and thousands of folks are hitting their servers at once. But so far, so good. → Read More
