It’s oddly wonderful to see a Jetski darting about in the water accompanied only by sporadic splashing sounds instead of the constant whine of a gasoline motor. The “Eco Watercraft” is an all-electric Jetski that can apparently go up to 50 miles per hour on a battery that lasts three hours in between charges. → Read More
LogLogic, a security and log management firm that helps companies sort though log data and manage their IT systems, has raised $8.8 million in an extended series D round of funding, led by Focus Ventures with Sequoia Capital, Telesoft Partners, Worldview Technology Partners, INVESCO Private Capital, SAP Ventures, CM-CIC Private Equity, Crédit Agricole Private Equity and ELAIA Partners participating. This brings LogLogic’s total funding to $58 million.
LogLogic plans to use the financing to fuel growth into new markets, including database activity monitoring. LogLogic recently acquired security management company, Exaprotect, for an undisclosed amount. → Read More
Have you been following this Nvidia-Intel spat? Long story short: Nvidia suspects that Intel has been giving laptop manufacturers a sweet deal vis-à-vis Atom processors and Intel’s whole chipset+integrated graphics chip. This upsets Nvidia because its own laptop graphics platform, called Ion, hasn’t been able to find a way onto a laptop… until now! Yes, the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 will be the first laptop to use Nvidia’s Ion platform. It’ll be $449 when it launches next month. → Read More
No more scratched disks! This video and FAQ shows you how to enable a USB hard drive on your wee that can run ISO files straight off the disk, ensuring that your precious, mint copy of Twilight Princess will never be covered with Cheeto dust.
Note: this is a way to pirate WIi games. → Read More
Twitter is crossing mediums to develop a TV show, according to a Variety report. Joining forces with LA-based production companies Reveille Productions and Brillstein Entertainment Partners, Twitter plans to launch an unscripted show that will put “ordinary people on the trail of celebrities in a revolutionary competitive format.”
Variety says the show’s concept was the brainchild of novelist Amy Ephron. Founded by NBC Entertainment exec Ben Silverman, Reveille Productions is known for producing TV hits like ABC’s Ugly Betty and NBC’s The Office. The company was apparently bought by Elisabeth Murdoch’s Shine Productions in February 2008 for $125 million.
Update: Tell us what you’d rather see Twitter work on before a TV show. → Read More
Here is some news from Sony, which comes directly from the who-on-earth-needs-this department. The company has launched a new service for the Japanese market that enables owners of Bravia TVs to send and receive e-postcards. Obviously, “Bravia Postcard” [JP] only works if you have an Internet-enabled Bravia at home. → Read More
From: Ralph
To: Piggy
CC: Lads on the Beach
It has come to my attention that some of your team has been using a USB Conch. Please note that it is against company policy to install or use outside hardware on company PCs and using an unauthorized shell-shaped USB hub on your PC is a direct violation of this policy. While we originally used the conch in the early years after the wreck, IT has decided that prior the launch of Windows 7 and the roll-out in accounting, food gathering, and HR later this year we will have to crack down on unauthorized hardware. → Read More
What doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger. Adam Lindemann learned that the hard way with iMindi, a startup trying to create a “thought engine” that was skewered by our judges at last year’s TechCrunch50. “It almost destroyed us,” says Lindemann. But he and his team have completely redesigned the product, which creates a mind map of your thoughts based on semantic indexing technology, and lets you “merge” those thought maps with related ones created by other people.
It is still rough around the edges, but is a vast improvement over the original concept. Today, iMindi is launching in private beta, and we have 1,000 invites for TechCrunch readers (sign up here).
The drubbing iMindi received at TechCrunch50 last year was brutal. After Lindemann’s presentation (see video below), Mark Cuban, who was a judge, laid into him: → Read More
According to the Guardian, O2 has scored the exclusive on the Palm Pre for the UK. It’s been quite a while since we first saw a GSM variant of the Pre at MWC, but things have been quiet ever since. Beating out Vodafone and Orange, O2 – the UK’s largest mobile provider- hopes to stock the upcoming Palm device by the holiday season. But that’s not the only must-have handheld that the UK mobile operator will be carrying this year. Assuming Apple announces new hardware next month, O2 will also carry the latest iPhone before the Pre launches later in the year. This is going to be a stellar year for smartphones and I’d better start saving my pennies. → Read More
Farkie is a free online tool that lets you extract and download multimedia content from websites and social networking services, including videos from YouTube and MP3 files from MySpace playlists. The web-based file downloader has been in public beta for about two months now, works without the need to register and is easy as pie.
All you need to do is copy-paste e.g. a public YouTube video URL, and Farkie will offer the video file to you in a variety of formats (MP3, AVI, WMV, WAV MOV or FLV). → Read More
When the WSJ broke the story about Russian tech investment group Digital Sky Technologies looking to buy a stake in Facebook for $200 million – a deal that would value the private company at $10 billion in preferred stock – there was still some uncertainty about whether the firm was gunning for a seat on Facebook’s board of directors as part of the investment offer, of if they’d be happy with just purchasing equity.
This is important, because we know Facebook recently received a term sheet for a similar venture round of funding at a lower valuation ($8 billion) which was turned down because it was based on the requirement of a board seat. → Read More
Japanese telecommunications giants SoftBank and Docomo unveiled their summer 2009 line-ups last week and were followed by the country’s No. 2 carrier, KDDI au, today. While SoftBank is to roll out 15 new cell phones this summer and Docomo even presented 17 models, KDDI au showed only 8 new candy bars [JP] in the morning. But some of these are amazing. → Read More
In the eyes of imaginative and opportunistic advertisers and marketers, bloggers and online influencers are the new celebrities and athletes. Brands are showering them with endorsement deals rich with products, cash, trips, exclusive access to information, and VIP treatment each and every day, creating a new genre of star spokespersons.
Many expert and lifestyle “citizen” bloggers and online weblebrities are creating communities around their personas as they freely and actively share personal and identifiable experiences online, in social networks and also in the real world. Those who can successfully connect their stories to others in and around their peer groups earn trust, visibility and authority – limited only by ambition and ingenuity. They’re rewarded for their presence and ability to point their followers in strategic directions.
These new brand ambassadors are almost the perfect instruments for surreptitiously sparking and cultivating a groundswell of desire within desired target markets.
Consumers look to experts and trusted peers for guidance and insight when making decisions.
But who’s to say that the information they’re receiving from their trusted sources is indeed truthful and honest? Many of these followers are blind to the fact that some of these authorities are actually directly or indirectly compensated for their opinions and insights. → Read More
Move over, Nokia N97. Your bigger, badder, unannounced brother is on the way – and one of our sources at Nokia has just clued us in on all of the details, from worldwide launch targets to hardware specs. → Read More
The iPhone is quickly becoming the platform of choice for nostalgia-inspiring classic games, with releases like Myst and Wolfenstein now landing on a regular basis. The latest addition, and the one that may strike closest to home for those console gamers of the early 90′s, is Sonic The Hedgehog. The game is now available for a reasonable $5.99, and you can download it here.
Now, I’d consider myself a pretty experienced gamer, and there are few games that I feel more attached to than the original Sonic the Hedgehog series. At a time when most popular games consisted of hopping and bopping on enemy baddies at a leisurely pace, Sonic brought something new to the table: speed. Sonic could race across the screen at a breakneck rate, clearing entire levels in under a minute or two (if you knew what you were doing), with the framerate keeping up the whole way. And he had an edgier attitude to boot, making him substantially cooler than the colorful plumbers representing that other gaming company. So does the iPhone edition do justice to its console predecessor? → Read More
TiVo has featured online scheduling and DVR control for a while, but it wasn’t anything special as it could only preform simple tasks. Not anymore. The website just got a refresh in the style of the TiVo Beta Search and is now loaded with features. In fact, there isn’t much that the new site can’t do. → Read More
Hey, Mike. John here. Remember that weird telekinesis game you liked from CES this year? It’s available at Amazon for pre-order, so go ahead and pick it up. It’s going to cost $99 and I personally think it’s garbage but I know you and the TC team were into it so go ahead and buy it. When I’m in town for WWDC I’ll school you all in Jedi mind games. “This is not the blogger you’re looking for.”
Our video after the jump. → Read More
CrunchDeals abound today as retailers feverishly drop prices in an attempt to keep people from going outside on a long weekend. Here’s a tidy list for you to peruse at your leisure. Enjoy… → Read More
