iRise is a software company that lets companies “visualize” models and prototype business applications before they are built so businesses can test drive the software. The ability to visualize business applications before they are officially deployed (or a single line of code is written) lets enterprises test drive apps, then quickly and cost-efficiently correct any problems. iRise says its software helps large companies cut at least 30% of their application development cost and deliver more successful systems twice as fast. iRise’s software is gaining popularity amongst Fortune 500 and big-name companies-UPS, The New York Times, Morgan Stanley, Delta Air Lines, and American Express all use the visualization software. iRise can be used to visualize any software that has a user interface: new Web applications, portals, enhancements to existing systems, customizations to packaged implementations, as well as mobile applications. But the software isn’t cheap-its around $7000 per user, which to a small or mid-size business may be too much to spend on a software application, especially in the current economy. CrunchBase Information iRise Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Finally, a DIY project that seems fairly simple to do: take a piece of wood, cut several holes in it, and make it look like an owl. Then wrap your portable MP3 player earbuds around it. Isn’t it cute?! → Read More
HP wins again with the latest Laptop Hunters episode. Is it just me, or are they doing some really creative editing with the dialogue? It’s like NPR interview editing on steroids. As for her choice, I personally would go with a Mac at that price (not so much at $1000 or $1500), or at least go with a more interesting PC. It’s widescreen and it has a good processor and video card? Okay, that’s every laptop at that price. → Read More
Although the original Mass Effect was promoted as a go-anywhere, do-anything exploration game, it was in fact merely a varnish of exploration layered over an admittedly good action RPG. That makes the jump to the iPhone as a pure action game much less of a shock than, say, KOTOR would have been. The iPhone may even be a good platform for this sort of thing, but if they ever hope to deliver on the promises of the franchise, they’d better stop with this one. → Read More
By far the two companies I’ve written about the most recently are Apple and Twitter. This is to the delight of some people, and the absolute horror of others. And now I’ve got something that will really whip up the fanboys and enrage the haters: Me writing about Apple writing about Twitter.
Yes, Apple has a new business profile of the micro-messaging service that it put up today on its site. The headline may just say it all, “Twitter. Triumph of humanity.” But it’s actually a fairly in-depth look at how Twitter uses Apple products to conduct their business. “Pretty much everyone here at Twitter uses a Mac,” says Alex Payne, Twitter’s API lead, in the video that accompanies the profile. → Read More
The generally therapeutic impact of aquariums is well known, but many people don’t the like the hassle or the size of a real fishtank. Aquawall has tried to to get around this by creating the Wandaquarium — a wall-mountable display intended to provide the interior decorator with a maintenance-free aquascape. → Read More
A loose-lipped Acer spokesman appears to have put a date on Windows 7. Quoth Bobby Watkins from Acer UK:
23rd October is the date the Windows 7 will be available. There is a 30 day upgrade time so that customers don’t wait to buy a new computer, so if you buy during that 30 day period, you’ll get a free upgrade to Windows 7.
Gasp! And here we were expecting to maybe be able to order it around Christmas! → Read More
Earlier this month we reported on eBay’s spinoff of StumbleUpon, a company it owned for a little less than two years. Ebay bought the company for $75 million in May 2007. Unknown until now, though, was the spinoff value of StumbleUpon. According to a source close to the transaction, it was $29 million.
New investors Sherpalo Ventures, Accel Partners, and August Capital joined StumbleUpon founders Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith in purchasing the company back from eBay. Outside investors put in 85% or so of the $29 million, we’ve been told, with Camp and Smith making up the rest.
eBay was paid $25 million in cash for StumbleUpon and retains a 10% interest in the spun off entity. $4 million remains in the company to fund operations. → Read More
We’ve reported in the past on how Apple has not only been late on payments to iPhone app developers, but has also neglected to pay some developers for their app sales at the store entirely. We thought that perhaps our post might call Apple’s attention to the problem. Apparently, developers complaints have gone unheard at Apple and now they are so upset that some of them are threatening to sue Apple for breach of contract.
As we wrote earlier, Apple’s delay in payments is affecting some developers but not all of them. Some are being paid but other developers are claiming no payment from Apple for sales and continued poor customer support from Apple. You can read the complaints on the developer forums here and here.
Apple’s contract, which is embedded below, says that payment will be made to developers within 45 days of the end of the month. Developers are claiming that there are massive delays in payments for as early as last fall and are not being paid the amount of money that the developers are in fact due from sales. One developer, who hasn’t been paid since November 2008, forwarded us an email chain between Apple’s App Store finance team and himself. An Apple employee, who was responding to the developers complaints, wrote that the developer’s continued emails about the late payments was “bordering on harassment,” and claimed that the finance team receives thousands of emails a day and couldn’t get to his right away. Another developer on the forum says that he hasn’t been paid since September and is owed close to $7000 for sales. → Read More
Getting around in the city ends up being a pretty complicated problem. Depending on where you work, what you do, and what sort of terrain you’ve got going on, you may want to take the bus, subway, a car, a bike, or a scooter. I bike, but I also live on top of Capitol Hill in Seattle. So if I want to go anywhere, I end up having to slog back up seven blocks of incline; so I end up driving distances I should probably be riding. This kind of half-electric cycle seems like it could be a really nice fit with a lifestyle like mine. Pedal when you want, cruise when you need to, and plug it in pretty much anywhere. → Read More
I can’t stop drooling over Gmail Labs. It’s simply a great idea for expanding a product, without forcing all users happy with the current one to upgrade to features they don’t want. And tonight may be the best Gmail Labs feature yet: Google Search In Gmail.
Yes, it may sound lame or obvious, but it’s a pretty kickass feature. Once enabled, it puts a Google Search widget in the left side toolbar of Gmail. From there, you simply input a query into the search box, and it will pop up the results in an overlay window at the bottom — the same type of window it users for IMs and Tasks. It will show you the top three results in this box automatically, or you can click “more” to expand the box. You can also pop the results out into their own window. → Read More
As I was doing my business at some establishment in San Francisco I noticed that the mirror above the urinal was warped. Upon closer inspection I found that it was an advert for the DSi. Needless to say it creeped me out. → Read More
The name “Android” is at the very core of Google’s mobile initiative. It’s even successfully gotten people to move away from calling the devices “Google Phones” or “GPhones,” something which seemed impossible prior to the unveiling. But Google may be in serious trouble of losing that name — or at least having to pay a hell of a lot of money to keep it.
Erich Specht, a man who runs a small Midwestern data company, applied for and was granted a trademark on the Android name in 2002, according to Forbes. Google? Well, it tried to trademark the name in 2007, shortly before its massive Android PR blitz — but it was rejected a few months later. Still, Google pushed forward with trying to gain legal rights over the name, but its appeals were again and again rejected, and its trademark application was apparently suspended last November.
So what does that mean? Well, Specht is seeking $94 million from Google (and all the other members of the Open Handset Alliance) for infringing on the Android name. He’ll be in court next week, and Google will have 60 days to respond to him. Given Google’s rejections by the Patent and Trademark Office, this things seems to reek of a high-priced settlement, in which Google gets to keep using the name while paying Specht something substantially less than the $94 million. But, it’s not quite that cut and dry. → Read More
Yesterday, days of hype culminated in the unveiling of the Wolfram Alpha search engine, which made its debut at a presentation put on by Harvard University’s Berkman Center. Unfortunately the resulting video footage turned out to be an exercise in frustration (or boredom). Not because it was uninteresting, mind you, but because we couldn’t see the apparently innovative search engine that creator Stephen Wolfram was talking about.
Apparently someone has had a change of heart over the media squeeze, because the Berkman Center has posted a new version of the video (or at least 10 minutes of it), this time with footage of the service.
This portion of the video includes a number of queries, including calculating the GDP of France (which results in a graph of the GDP over time) and the number in Internet users in Europe, generating a relevant histogram. → Read More
Yesterday myYearbook CEO Geoff Cook reached out to FunAdvice President Jeremy Goodrich to talk about a possible acquisition. Based on certain assumptions, Cook said, he’d be prepared to offer $125,000 cash up front, $25,000 in consulting fees and $125,000 in MyYearBook stock.
Goodrich emailed Cook back and bcc’d us with his response: no deal. I asked Goodrich, who I don’t know, why he copied us on the email string. His response: “I won’t do that again, I thought techcrunch would find it interesting.”
Interesting indeed. I wish all startup founders did this. The email string is below, with some contact information removed. I’m sure Cook is thrilled. → Read More
Debaufre just announced their new Aircraft-8 Chronograph, and I have to admit. I want one. Vaguely B&R inspired, the square black case with the red hands on the sub dials just speaks to me. Add to that the 44mm case, sapphire glass, and the fact it’s available in either PVD black or stainless, and I’m sold. → Read More
Today Aroxo launches its ambitious play, aiming to create a brand new space in between online retailing and the auction model – specifically targeting eBay. This is, put simply, the thousands of years old process of buyers and sellers haggling over price put into an online model. But there is more to it that that, since it also brings pre-qualified leads to sellers who want to offload inventory quickly. So how does it work in practice? Every day people are walking into a store with an Amazon page printout asking the store to negotiate the price down. Aroxo takes this idea online. Say you want to buy an iPod (the site is launching mainly with electronics to start with). As a buyer, you type in what you’re prepared to pay, creating a “Want-it” note. To guide people away from putting some crazy low crazy in, buyers get told an average price for how much something is going for retail. A thermometer tells you how close you are to the price the seller is looking for and you can specify a time limit, say a week, for the seller to respond. All those iPod buyers then go into the system and the sellers, watching on the other end, see the offers coming in and can bid to offer the iPod at a price which makes sense for them and which might entice the buyer, all in real time. All the tools to handle payment, settlement, feedback are built into the platform. The two parties then either strike a deal, or continue negotiating until one side caves in and a transaction goes through. There’s no commitment for all this, it’s completely free and no-one gets the buyer’s email address or contact details. However, although there is no commitment to buy when starting the negotiation, if the buyer chooses to send a negotiation and the seller then accepts their offer, then they are committed to the purchase. It’s sort of haggling for the 21st century. The site is as easy to use as a normal retail site. Since the site is based on pre-qualified buyers, you don’t have to have to wait for other buyers to join you, unlike the old, failed group-buying model of sites like LetsBuyIt.com. The advantages are that buyers can potentially bag a bargain, and don’t need to use search engines as much. For sellers they get to sell → Read More
Short version: The iPhone may be good at a lot of things – but one thing its definitely not known for is its good battery life. It definitely has better battery than some devices (we’re looking at you, T-Mobile G1), but it still pretty terrible. If you’re a heavy user, you’ll want a backup battery – but there are oh-so-many of them to choose from. Which one’s the right one for you? If you’re carrying an iPhone and an iPod or two, the iPWR backup battery is a solid pick. → Read More
Please join me in a celebration of one of the hardware world’s biggest movers on their 40th birthday. The last few years have been pretty rough on AMD, but they’re still rocking out and competing convincingly with their arch-rivals, Intel and NVIDIA. To celebrate their middle-age debut, they’re doing a couple contests, so if you want to win a new processor or video card, step right this way. → Read More
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