No need to introduce Mark Cuban to you, dear readers. The outspoken tech billionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks has already made quite a name for himself as a savvy tech entrepreneur, angel investor and blogger. Cuban is today announcing that he has finalized an investment in New Orleans, Louisiana-based NAKEDpizza after 3 months of negotiations.
NAKEDpizza is an all-natural pizza delivery shop that has famously done most of its marketing efforts on and centered around its Twitter profile and Facebook presence. Two months ago, the healthy pizza store even erected a Twitter billboard above its first – and for now – only store. → Read More
Are you a geek? Do you like Martial Arts movies? Have you ever secretly dreamed of being a Ninja? Are you not afraid of embarassing yourself, like, ever? Then Tokyo-based crap gadget maker Solid Alliance (which strives to become a Thanko competitor) has something unique for you: A shuriken [JP] (ninja star) for your USB port. → Read More
Spotify, the streaming music service which is gradually gathering a large fan-base in Europe, and is poised to launch in the US, has been plotting a mobile version for a while. It recently hired a head of mobile and the speculation was that it would come out with an iPhone app first after releasing a teaser video. But today it’s released video of an Android app it’s being demoing to people at Google I/O.
The Android app is still very much a work in progress and subject to minor changes, but it gives a pretty good overview of their thinking. The demo highlights a number of features including playback, playlists, offline synch and music search.
For those of you who haven’t seen it yet – the service has yet to launch in North America, although I’m about to send some lucky TechCrunch writers some preview codes we’ve gotten hold of – Spotify is a lightweight iTunes-like application for Windows and Mac that lets you search, browse and stream a deep collection of music. → Read More
Velocity Interactive Group, a venture fund managing around $1.4 billion in investments that was known as ComVentures until November 2007, has changed its name to Fuse Capital. Separately, the fund is announcing the formation of a new venture fund with Best Buy focusing on digital media investments. The size of the new fund is not being disclosed.
Fuse Capital was rocked in March when partner Jonathan Miller left to head up News Corp.’s newly formed Digital Media group. → Read More
A couple weeks ago we got an early demo of the Surface SP1 update, and saw that one of the goals of which was to improve Windows-Surface cross-compatibility and encourage developers to make their apps touch-compatible. Looks like that work goes both ways, as it appears that Surface content and functionality is going to be kicking it with Windows 7.
Check out the video inside. Everyone loves videos. → Read More
It looks like the movie version of Castlevania, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson (of Aliens vs. Predator infamy), has been put on hold indefinitely. With luck that means this dog will never see the light of day, but bad movies have a way of completing themselves in spite of all odds.
What this means for other pending video game adaptations is debatable, but I doubt the cancellation of one beleaguered project headed by an unsuccessful director is indicative of the state of the video game movie industry. → Read More
Man alive: look at this monster. It’s the DualTow watch by Cristophe Claret. This watch has a single-pusher chronograph and striking mechanism to chime when you activate the chronograph. The coolest additions are the two belt displays showing the hours and minutes. Then you’ve got a tourbillon to round things out. It’s a manual-wind movement with 50-hour reserve and only 68 will be made. → Read More
Talk of how to monetize Twitter, both from its founders perspective and a third-party point of view, is dominating conversation on the web these days. Tweetbucks, a startup founded by entrepreneur Chris Sukornyk, is hoping to make money for users of Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed through leveraging affiliate fees and CPCs from ads.
Here’s how it works. Tweetbucks has a database with thousands of online merchants that offer referral fees (or money you get from merchants when your advertisements of a product result in a purchase ), including Amazon, BestBuy, Barnes & Noble and Shoes.com. All you need to do is find a product on a retail site, enter it on Tweetbuck’s site, and the startup will automatically shorten (via Bit.ly) and convert it to an affiliate enabled link, referencing the site’s data base of online merchants that pay out affiliate fees. You can then add the link to in a Tweet, Facebook status update or FriendFeed message. → Read More
Even though we haven’t heard a thing about the Acer Aspire Timeline since it was announced a while ago, that doesn’t mean we have forgotten about Acer’s latest ultraportable notebook. The $598, 15.4-inch model (5810TZ-4657) was spotted at a Wal-Mart of all places by one of our intrepid readers minutes ago. Didn’t know that Walley World stocked the latest and greatest, eh? → Read More
It’s been more than six months since we’ve seen hide or hair of the highly-anticipated Plastic Logic eReader, but the D conference has got it up and running, and even touchable. It’s as thin as we remember it, and the touchscreen appears to be fully functional. I was afraid from watching earlier demos that it might be limited to certain areas on the screen, but in fact it’s all over the place and you can even write with a stylus.
Could this be the e-book that overtakes the Kindle? → Read More
The latest trend in PC hardware has been previously component-only companies like Asus, MSI, and NZXT getting into markets they had nothing to do with before. The results have been mixed, of course: the early Eee PCs were kind of chintzy, MSI has struggled with price points and brand differentiation, and NZXT’s Avatar mouse was unique but flawed. But it’s exciting and it adds to hardware diversity, which I think is a good thing. And now Cooler Master, maker of excellent PC cases, is putting out a gaming mouse and some other stuff.
I mean, why not, right? → Read More
Unlike Timbuk2 or Manhattan Portage, San Francisco-based Chrome has managed to stick to their core roots without sacrificing their souls to make diaper bags and yoga mat holders just to make an extra buck. It’s inevitable, though, that after 14 years Chrome would expand their line of bags to include those of us that aren’t as hardcore as the couriers biking around cities like Manhattan. → Read More
We’ve had some tricorder false alarms over the last couple years, but this one seems to be legit. A multi-institutional task force under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Science & Technology Directorate (take a breath) has created a hand-held tool which can read pulse, body temperature, and respiration from up to 40 feet away. It’s not quite at the level of diagnosing space plagues, but it could save valuable seconds in triage situations. → Read More
Earlier today, a startup called Siri that wants to bring virtual assistants to the iPhone came out of stealth. Siri brings a very advanced collection of technologies (speech recognition, natural language processing, semantic data processing, and geo-location) to create a virtual assistant that helps you perform tasks through a conversational, question-and-answer interface. You can read all about it in this lengthy guest post by Nova Spivack.
But sometimes it is easier to just see the product for yourself. Below is the first public demo video of Siri, which I got on video today from CEO Dag Kittlaus at the AllThingsD conference in San Diego. Siri won’t be available on the iPhone until later this summer. → Read More
While scooting around All Things D on his Segway, Woz was heard screaming at the top of his lungs that his old buddy Steve Jobs “doesn’t sound like he’s sick,” or that he’s in a health crisis as Ben Charny of the WSJ says. OK, Woz wasn’t really on his Segway screaming, but he hasn’t directly asked Jobs how he was doing either. → Read More
Wow. That was fast. A few years after Gamefly basically sewed up the entire games-by-mail thing, Blockbuster is launching a game rental pilot program in the U.S. Where is the first place that gets these exciting 360, Wii, and PS3 games? Is it Austin? Dallas? Denver?
Nope. Cleveland. That’s right: the heart of Ohio’s blightland gets to rock out with it’s controller out with Blockbuster’s online game rental service.
There will be an incremental monthly fee and they’re planning on rolling out the the rest of the country this year. Until then we can all envy Cleveland. → Read More
