Newegg has a pretty good deal on a 1.5TB external hard drive. The Seagate FreeAgent costs $119, features a 7200 rpm drive, connects via USB, and includes free shipping (the deal ends today). Reviews have been mixed as this drive apparently had some problems early on, although it appears that the kinks have been worked out thanks to new firmware. Seagate FreeAgent [Newegg.com] → Read More
Music search and streaming service Project Playlist may finally be turning the tide in its ongoing battle with the music industry. EMI Music, one of the three major labels which was suing Project Playlist for copyright infringement, dropped out of the litigation and is announcing today that it has licensed its entire catalog to the service instead. EMI joins Sony BMG, which was never part of the lawsuit, in licensing its digital catalog of music to Project Playlist.
That is two down, two to go. Warner Music and Universal Music Group are still party to the suit. If Project Playlist CEO Owen Van Natta can get them to license their catalogs as well, maybe the vultures circling the company will go away. The service is currently banned on both Facebook and MySpace. Getting the other two labels on board would be necessary for lifting those bans.
Warner and Universal don’t seem to be in any rush to settle, however. → Read More
It looks like 2009 will be a good year for midi controllers. First Akai came out with the APC40, soon followed by The Maschine by Native Instruments. This new baby here, the Ohm64 from Livid is elegant and sexy. → Read More
While advertising revenues have been disappointingly low for most applications on Facebook and other social networks, another option app developers are increasingly turning towards is micropayments for virtual goods or premium features. Both Facebook and MySpace have admitted that they are working on their own payment systems, and Apple could play a role as well since it already has a payment system in place for iPhone apps (although even Apple is running into some bumps).
While the bigger players are fiddling with their payment system plans, nimbler startups are moving in to fill the gap. One of these is Spare Change Payments, which is trying to become the Paypal of micropayments. A year after launch, more than 700 apps across Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo use Spare Change for micropayments. Spare Change is processing $2.5 million a month in micropayments, which is a $30 million annual run-rate. The apps that are having the most success with micropayments are games and ones that sell virtual goods.
Now, the company is making it easier for consumers to pay through Spare Change with a new payment widget that pops up in each app instead of sending people off to a separate payments page. → Read More
The latest venture fund to set up a separate seed financing program is Boston-based Spark Capital, a prolific investor in Internet and new media companies such as Twitter, Boxee, Tumblr, Veoh and KickApps. The initiative is dubbed Start@Spark, and is primarily geared towards startups from the Boston and New York areas.
Early-stage investments will amount up to $250,000, and will not be restricted to information technology companies but also periodically be granted to startups offering financial or educational services. Entrepreneurs who get into the program will have access to Spark’s partner network and legal counsel, and will also be prepared for a second, more formal round of funding at a later stage if progress is deemed satisfactory by the firm. You can apply here. → Read More
Online deal marketplace FatWallet.com is getting a makeover. FatWallet redesigned its existing site to give it a slick, user-friendly interface. The money-saving site also added a new feature to organize its deals called Coupon Search, which is stocked with with online coupons for consumers. And FatWallet expanded its roster of retail parters. While the site originally had relationships with 800 retailers, it now gets deals from over 2,400 online retailers.
FatWallet also revamped its Cash Back feature, which consumers get cash back from shopping at certain sites. The cash back feature actually has some pretty good deals. For example, if you book a United Airlines flight, you could get 4 percent back. The site also offers consumers a forum where they can share money saving tips and shopping deals. FatWallet has deals from some pretty well-known retailers like Dell, Sephora, Macys and Travelocity. And FatWallet’s forums for consumers are fairly extensive and useful, ranging from threads addressing the the best deals on tech gadgets to which credit card to get. → Read More
Yahoo is cutting more fat today by closing its travel bargains website FareChase, which it originally acquired back in July 2004 and re-launched two years later. The company will be announcing the shut-down later today, and will start redirecting visitors of the service to its main travel site soon.
The service let customers perform comparative searches for pricing on flights, hotels, cruises and cars, but it was apparently not enough of a strategic product enhancement for Yahoo Travel, hence the company discontinuing it altogether to tighten its focus and cut costs in these difficult times.
Sounds like a plan to me. → Read More
No, it is not April Fools day – yet. The British government is proposing that Twitter be taught in elementary schools as part of a wider push to make online communication and social media a permanent part of the UK’s education system.
And that’s not all. Kids will be taught blogging, podcasting and how to use Wikipedia alongside Maths, English and Science. The draft plans were due to be published next month, but have leaked early.
Children will also learn “fluency” in keyboard skills, and how to use a spellchecker. Luckily they will still be taught how to spell themselves, rather than rely on Mr Clippy. → Read More
Radionomy, based out of Brussels, Belgium (yes we do have a startup scene here), has secured more funding in order to bring more enhancements to and enable scale for its personalized web radio application, which it is debuting in public beta today.
The size of the financing round wasn’t shared in detail, but the startup did say its total capital now exceeds €1.5 million (roughly $2 million).
Radionomy essentially offers everyone a chance to set up their own Internet radio station free of charge and share a personalized radio show complete with music programming, jingles and commercials with friends and the rest of the world. Users get to tap into readily available music libraries and jingles and add custom sequences, interviews, reports and podcasts to the mix, enabling anyone to build a genuinely personalized radio show and broadcast it for free, worldwide. Radionomy takes care of the associated costs (including royalties), and shares advertising revenue with radio station creators, relative to the size of their audience. Read more about the project, which is European in scope, right here → Read More
Things are getting out of control in the 3D modeling business. Models for movies and games have gone from thousands to hundreds of thousands of triangles, and the lighting and shading necessary for them is getting so complicated as to require a whole separate video card. Imagine you’re an animator at Pixar — do you think they made WALL-E on netbooks? No, son. They probably used things we haven’t even heard of on this planet, and they probably had Quadro graphics cards in them. Nvidia’s new line of unbelievably expensive cards will block out the sun, and ray-trace its own shadow in real time. → Read More
I was just writing up the leak of this sucker when it drops in my lap. The new Canon T1i is the latest in their Rebel series of entry-level DSLRs, and this new version makes me sad I went for the XSi instead of waiting. Blogger’s remorse. At any rate, it looks excellent. So what’s new? → Read More
T-Mobile’s long awaited USB dongle is available starting today and we’ve had the pleasure of tinkering with the webConnect USB laptop stick for the day. T-Mobile hooked up with Huawei for their first foray into the mobile arena with a slim and stylish device. Considering how young and fertile T-Mobile’s 3G network, I was surprised by the speeds this little dongle could muster up. I’m currently in Redwood City, CA, and my parent’s house is a bit of a dead zone, but I managed to get 337kbps up and 841kbps down. We’ll see how she does when I get back to NYC where I’m sure the 3G network is a bit more robust. Sadly, it only works with Windows, but T-Mobile promises Mac OS X support this summer. → Read More
T-Mobile subscribers have been waiting patiently for the big magenta to roll out their 3G network and it finally happened last year. But, let’s be honest, it wasn’t as spectacular as we thought it would be. The only worthwhile device on the network is the G1 and that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. T-Mo plans to keep expanding its HDSPA network to more than 100 U.S. cities, but without proper devices to utilize that high-speed network it’s sort of a “who cares” fact. Nevertheless this is what T-Mobile has to say about their 3G expansion. → Read More
OCZ, more well-known for its RAM and hard drives, has been making a push into the peripheral sector lately, and these mice are the latest product of that. They’re called the Behemoth and the Eclipse; I’ll let you guess which is which. → Read More
I guess sales of the white K2000 did well enough that Pentax Japan announced a new limited edition olive Km (It’s K2000 in the US and Km everywhere else). It will be a limited run of 1000 units and ships in late October. No word on price.
Pentax also announced a limited edition K20D with an all titanium color finish on the body and battery grip. This, too, will ship in late October with a 1000 unit run. → Read More
So in addition to the other projects they’ve got going on for the iPhone, id Software (specifically John Carmack) has been working on real ports of Doom and Wolfenstein 3D for the iPhone. Obviously you’ve got more impressive games available, but who can resist taking up a couple megs of space with one of the original first person shooters? → Read More
So these might not be for everyone, but Iogear announced a 2-port USB 2.0 printer switch and a 4-port USB “Net ShareStation.” The printer switch allows you to plug in one Mac and one PC into a single printer and it automatically detects which one is sending print jobs. The Net ShareStation allows you to hook up four different doodads via USB and share that amongst your fellow co-workers or home inhabitants. If you plug it into your wireless router than it puts everything over the network wirelessly. Did you get that last part? Wirelessly. → Read More
Today (March 24) is Ada Lovelace Day, a great idea organised by Suw Charman-Anderson. Over 1,000 people have signed up to write a blog post about a woman in technology whom they admire. Although I didn’t sign the pledge I’m doing a post anyway. I knew about Ada since the day I read about her semi-fictionalised character in that amazing steampunk novel, The Difference Engine, and well, I was impressed. Plus I like the aim of the whole project. Ada Lovelace Day was founded to raise the visibility of women in tech, and rightly so. This sector is woefully bad at getting more gender balance into the industry, and that is partly why I’ve put a debate about the issue into Geek ‘n Rolla next month. Ada Lovelace herself was fascinating. Born in 1815 she became the world’s first computer programmer. In 1842 she translated some notes on Charles Babbage’s invention, the Analytical Engine, and then created a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers with it. Thus the first computer program was born. The first computer programming language was thus named Ada. In 1942 the ENIAC was programmed not by men but by six women. A woman, Grace Hopper inspired the development of the COBOL programming language. So computers are steeped in female history. The Guardian has a great list of women in tech. But I’ll be honest. I don’t know many of them, so allow me to list some of the great women in this business today I that have had the privilege to meet, aside from Suw herself, and some I’d like to meet. This list is not comprehensive and yes – before you ask – it includes people who don’t code because there are plenty of men in tech who don’t code but still consider themselves in tech. Including me! Capeesh? And besides, these women have to put up with all us guys, so I think they deserve a roll of honour don’t you? In addition to which, the next time you see an advisory board with no women members, or a tech event with no women speakers, then at least now you might have a list to refer to for some ideas, right? Right. (see also Geekspeakr.com) Adriana Lukas, mediainfluencer.net Aleks Krotoski, The Guardian Alicia Navarro, Skimbit Amanda Lorenzani, Excite Amanda Rose, Twestival Anna Bance, Girlmeetsdress.com Anna Colclough, Tourdust.com Avid Larizadeh, Accel Ventures Basheera Khan, journalist Bena → Read More
This week’s TechCrunch Europe Job of the Week is for a Senior Developer ( – ASP.Net/C#) at Gig Junkie. Remember, it costs only £20 to post *any* kind of advert on the CrunchBoard related to your startup/business, whether it be jobs, searches for office space or requests for new projects. Every week we publish the Job of the Week here (8,000+ on RSS) and Twitter it to about 7,000+ more people. To apply to have Job of the Week featured, put up a job on the CrunchBoard and contact editorial. → Read More
