William Reeve, serial entrepreneur and Angel investor, spoke at Geek ‘n Rolla on “Bootstrapping, Scaling and Cashflow”. Since then I’ve had many people tell me how great his speech was. So he has kindly supplied his slides from the speech. (We are working on getting all audio from the day as well). → Read More
Still anxiously awaiting a release of the Android v1.5 “Cupcake” build sometime this month? It looks like it’s time to uncross your fingers and take a breath. We’re running out of days in April, so we were already a bit skeptical – but T-Mobile Germany has gone ahead and confirmed a May roll out. While T-Mobile US has been slightly reluctant to talk about it, T-Mobile Germany went ahead and put the information right on the G1′s product page. With the Cupcake-ified HTC Magic launching on the 5th of next month, we’ve got high hopes that everyone can get in on the Cupcake party within that first week. We’ll update you if we hear more. [Via TalkAndroid] → Read More
Flash! The Windows 7 release candidate has leaked. You can find it where you usually find such things. → Read More
After Apple announced that roughly 98% of applications that came there way were being approved within 7 days, there was a lull in the barrage of App Store submission horror stories bombarding our inbox. We thought that perhaps Apple had figured things out on their end, and that everyone was just happy; alas, it seems like everyone was just waiting for something like Baby Shaker before they came out of the woodworks. Our inboxes are once again overflowing with tales of App Store tribulation. For most of the denials we hear about, the reasoning behind the red light is blatantly obvious. Be it bodily fluids, naked ladies, or whatever else, there are just a few things that Apple won’t ever be cool with. These stories aren’t worth retelling. But today, one came in that gave us a laugh: after being denied twice for “objectionable content”, these app developers simply prettied things up a bit – and got approved. → Read More
There’s no word on price, but Nintendo is releasing a new lime green DS Lite bundle in the US with Personal Trainer: Cooking on May 3 with a chichi case to match. Yay! I wonder who this bundle is targeted at? Can we please get Virtual Console for the DSi instead of this crap? → Read More
Some numbers we published yesterday showed that while iPhone owners (not surprisingly) love to download apps, owners of other smartphones do not. As we noted, the numbers seemed a bit incomplete since the Android platform wasn’t represented. We asked Compete, which took the survey, to send those our way.
To be clear, the sample size is “very small,” but it’s somewhat interesting none the less. Sure enough, Android users do seem to enjoy downloading apps more than all other smartphones aside from the iPhone. But interestingly, there were some G1 owners who had downloaded zero apps. Even though a lot more iPhone owners showed up in the survey, there were none that said they had downloaded zero apps — whereas that was a popular number with the other smartphones. → Read More
Lenovo is “exploring” the possibility of a ThankPad-branded netbook. Such a netbook would, one guesses, be the first specifically aimed at the business crowd. Does this mean that we’re beginning to see the blurring of the line between netbooks and notebooks? One can dream, friends. One can dream. → Read More
A prominent sound engineer once told me that Etymotic was one of three headphone manufacturers in existence today that actually produces high fidelity in-ear ‘phones worth buying. That’s a pretty bold statement, but an accurate one.
Of all the Etymotic earphones that I’ve tried, I’ve never had issue with the tree tips since they provide more than adequate noise-isolation, but custom tips are always best. So, Etymotic has teamed up with Advanced Communication Solutions to provide custom-made silicone tips for the hf2 earphones, which cater to the Apple crowd with the in-line controls. → Read More
Can you pinhold camera? Is it penetrated into your Life? It costs $66. It is hidden in the TIE pattern! Check carefully and have a remote! Add to cart! 2GB memory for store video! → Read More
New firmware time, shutterbugs! It’s a big firmware for the 50D and addresses the vertical banding issues that have plagued the otherwise fantastic digicam. Plus, the new firmware updates all three cameras so they will support the AF assist beam feature of the new flash, Speedlite 270 EX, which is scheduled to be released sometime this month.
From one woodworker to another, huge props for this wooden iPhone case. I have been wanting to turn out a similar case for my BlackBerry Storm but I never envisioned the correct design; appareantly he did. These cases aren’t the cheapest at $84+ but they are certainly some of the best looking. The entire thing is constructed of wendge and finished with linseed oil. The shape of the case follows the lines of the iPhone3G. It, however, does not provide access to any of the buttons or ports on the phone. After all, it’s just a case. And it’s made out of wood. → Read More
They pulled the trigger: Owen Van Natta, who apparently is never pictured without a two day stubble, is now the CEO of MySpace and will report to Jonathan Miller, the new CEO of Digital Media for News Corp.
Van Natta is a former Facebook and Amazon executive who, until today, was the CEO of a decidedly unstable music startup called Playlist. He’s got the resume to run MySpace, but as we said yesterday there are some serious questions around whether he’s the right guy. He still owns a significant part of Facebook and he’s clearly leaving Playlist, and the executives and investors he brought on board, in a bad situation. He joined that company just a few months ago. The rumor is that they’ll now be forced to shut down, although Playlist announces in a separate release that board member John Sykes, a cofounder of MTV, will take over as CEO for now.
This has been a dramatic week for MySpace, and the situation probably couldn’t have been handled more poorly. One person close to the situation described the firing of DeWolfe and the hiring of Van Natta as resembling “retarded drunk people riding bumper cars.”
The full press releases of both announcements are below: → Read More
As regular readers know, I’m working on a book about global entrepreneurship and taking TechCrunch readers along with me. By that I mean, I’ll be blogging about cool companies I find, not that I’m actually chartering a plane for all of you. Sorry, but, you know, it’s a recession. Up next: China. I’ll be in Shanghai and Bejing May 9-22. It’s my first trip to China, and I have a long list of potential companies and investors to meet, but I want to make sure I’m not missing any gems. So if you know any such gems, local venture capitalists, angel investors or anyone with an interesting entrepreneurial story please email me at sarah(at)techcrunch(dot)com or leave it in the comments. I now return you to your regularly scheduled Friday flood of news about MySpace and Twitter. (PS: This has to be the shortest post I’ve ever written.) → Read More
Hot on the heels of the announcement that Owen Van Natta is unceremoniously leaving Project Playlist to run MySpace, Project Playlist has announced that John Sykes will be stepping in as CEO. Sykes is a co-founder of MTV, former president of VH1, and former president of Infinity Broadcasting, one of the largest radio broadcasting companies in the US. Sykes has been a boardmember at Playlist up until this point.
Project Playlist is a decidedly troubled company. After showing very impressive traffic numbers late last year, Playlist saw its traffic plummet after its embeddable playlists were removed from both MySpace and Facebook, which were threatened with lawsuits by the major music labels. Under the guidance of Van Natta, who only joined the company in November, the company had been making some headway with music industry. With his extensive background in the music industry Sykes may be able to keep Playlist on the right track, but Van Natta’s abrupt departure isn’t exactly a vote of confidence in the company. → Read More
Got a boring weekend ahead? Nothing going on? No friends? Chances are you probably have a Pleo and a Wii then. If so, how about rigging up the Pleo for Wii control? The hack isn’t that simple but when you see the video after the jump, you’re going to want to try it. Plus, it’s not like you need to change dinner plans or anything. → Read More
Sucks to be an Apple retail employee. Apple has reduced the hours of of their be-t-shirted geniuses have been fired this quarter, down from 15,600 in Q1. They are also planning fewer retail locations this year and are ramping down the use of part-time employees. → Read More
Good Data, a startup founded in the Czech Republic and with headquarters in San Francisco, has closed a second round of financing – $2.5 million from Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, OATV and General Catalyst. The company has now raised a total of around $4.5 million in capital.
You don’t see a lot of startups coming out of Eastern Europe, and even fewer who receive Silicon Valley capital. But founder Roman Stanek is an exception and a highly fundable individual. He sold his first startup, NetBeans, to Sun for $10 million and his second, Systinet, to Mercury Interactive/HP for $105 million. And like his previous startups, Stanek has perfected the running of a tech company with operations in both the U.S. and Prague.
Good Data is disrupting a highly lucrative multi-billion dollar market – data analytics. This is a sector dominated by huge software companies like IBM (via their Cognos acquisition), SAP (via Business Objects) and Oracle (via Hyperion). Companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the software, plus large yearly maintenance fees. And now Good Data is offering a cloud based solution. For free. → Read More
Twitter’s march towards world domination continues apace. This morning comScore released its global numbers for March, 2009. Worldwide visitors to Twitter.com increased 95 percent in the month of March from 9.8 million to 19.1 million, according to its estimates. This compares to 9.3 million visitors in the U.S. alone.
These numbers only count visitors to Twitter’s Website, which is not the same as active users and also does not include people who interact with Twitter via desktop or mobile clients (a large portion of users). But the comScore numbers provide a good proxy for Twitter’s overall growth, which was helped recently by Ashton Kutcher’s race with CNN to one million followers, and Oprah’s subsequent adoption of the service. → Read More
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