Woot! is selling a refurbished Slingbox SOLO (why do companies insist on capitalizing words for no reason) for $99.99 plus $5 for shipping. This same unit, new, sells for well over $150 elsewhere. → Read More
Got HTC Hero overload yet? Well, here’s the official demo video of HTC’s latest. Enjoy. → Read More
We have now opened voting in The Europas, the tech innovation awards from TechCrunch Europe honouring the best tech companies and startups across the web and mobile scene from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. We’ll hold the awards ceremony in London on July 9 for 300 people: you can get a ticket here. There is more information about the awards here.
You can now vote for the nominated companies and personalities from the industry. You can only vote once for one entrant, so make it count. Your vote will be counted towards nominating the five finalists in each category. Voting will close on Wednesday June 2, next week. Thanks to Polldaddy for this voting mechanism. Now go vote now! → Read More
The microstock photography business is growing out of nothing. The leader in the market, iStockphoto, is projecting $200 million in revenues this year. When iStockphoto was bought by Getty Images February, 2006 for $50 million, its revenues that for year were about $23 million, according to COO Kelly Thompson. In 2007, revenues were $72 million, and the company never disclosed 2008 revenues. (Update: Thompson says 2008 revenues were around $150 million). Thompson says iStockPhoto has been profitable since before the acquisition and now represents a “significant chunk” of . (Getty Images is owned by the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman and does not break out revenues formally via audited statements).
The demand for affordable images for use on Websites and in print is catching on and iStockphoto is the main beneficiary. It sells a photo, illustration, or video every second, and pays out $1.2 million a week to the photographers and artists who upload images to the site. There are nearly 80,000 artists in total represented on the site and 5 million images. “Definitely the print side is declining and we are seeing lots of Web usage,” reports Thompson. → Read More
Way back when 2009 was still somewhat fresh, Nokia’s CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo dropped the news that the world’s favorite Finnish handset maker was getting into the laptop biz. With a bit of algebra, logic, and other voodoo, we figured that what he actually meant was netbooks. Some commenters called us crazy, citing a weak economy and low-margins. Turns out, we were right. → Read More
Whenever I tell someone the countries I’m hitting for my new book, they start out nodding, then the nodding slows, then they just get confused. “China, India, Brazil, Israel and…Rwanda.” Then there’s the inevitable question: “Rwanda? Is there even any technology in Rwanda?” Sometimes I even get asked if I have to stay in a tent when I go there.
The answer to the second question is no. There are plenty of hotels, and I don’t do tents unless they have outlets and wifi.
The answer to the tech question two fold. First: Despite the last decade of covering nothing but tech, I actually consider myself more of a reporter who covers entrepreneurs. It just so happens that’s normally correlated with technology, especially in the U.S. But increasingly some of the best opportunities to build the next great billion-dollar company even in markets like India and China are more tech-enabled service and product businesses than classic high-tech plays. And really, are Web businesses even about the sheer technology anymore these days?
Second: Yes, there is technology in Rwanda. And there will be more in the next few years. Rwanda is emerging as an interesting test case on how a digital divide is actually being bridged in a methodical, well-thought-out, step-by-step manner. → Read More
Panasonic’s Toughbooks have legendary strength but I doubt any of us ever considered them tough enough to survive a white tiger or Asian elephant. I didn’t. The last “durable notebook” I tested failed with a 4 foot drop. But the Panasonic Toughbook that Forbes tested took a .22 bullet and still booted after being used as a chew toy. Impressive. → Read More
There have been questions as to whether iPhone developers can make significant revenue from ads on the iPhone, mainly because the supply of advertisers can’t keep up with the demand for iPhone apps. Others say that developers actually can make quite a bit from ads on free apps. Mobile game advertising network Greystripe is in that camp and it is launching a new CPM Protection Program designed to guarantee ad revenue to iPhone app developers.
Greystripe says that the various mobile ad networks, including competitor AdMob, are undercutting each others’ CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) when competing for advertising dollars, thus leaving iPhone app developers with lower CPMs overall. Greystripe’s CPM Protection Program offers to beat any other ad networks’ eCPM by at least 25% for 60 days. → Read More
The People’s Republic of China has apparently barred its citizens from visiting a host of Google properties, including the main search engine, Google Apps, Google Reader and Gmail. A search on Twitter (preferred hashtag seems to have become #fuckgfw) reveals that many Chinese are complaining, particularly about not being able to use the search engine, although it appears Google.cn can still be reached at this point.
Can anyone actually in China confirm this in comments? As far as we can tell from using tools such as WebsitePulse, a lot of Google services are effectively blocked at this point. We’ve also cross-tested other popular US services like Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook and Bing, which appear to remain accessible for the moment. → Read More
Remember HD DVD? The video format developed by Toshiba that lost the format war against Blu-ray? Today Toshiba held a pretty interesting annual shareholder meeting in Tokyo during which president Atsutoshi Nishida didn’t say they will revive HD DVD but that his company thinks about producing Blu-ray products. → Read More
Adobe and HTC are bringing Flash to Android on its new Hero smartphone. The implementation will support video and audio codecs familiar to users of Flash on the desktop. The HTC Hero delivers powerful, compatible video playback performance using Flash technology, and interactive content enabled by ActionScript® 2.0. Users can enjoy and navigate through Web videos using intuitive video controls. With progressive streaming of large MP3 audio files from a Web server and the local file storage, the HTC Hero provides a seamless audio experience. Support for Sorenson and On2 VP6 codecs enables higher quality video and playback of existing Web content. A demo of the user experience enabled by the Flash Platform on the HTC Hero and the Android operating system can be viewed at www.adobe.com/go/htchero. → Read More
It’s ‘official’; big shot CEOs are social media slackers. The hot news comes straight from ÜBERCEO, who says it conducted research on the topic for the past few weeks and has found that there’s little chance you’ll ever get to exchange pokes and tweets with Fortune 100 CEOs for the time being. Here’s the ‘miserable level of engagement’ ÜBERCEO has uncovered:
(after the jump) → Read More
The era of Android customization has begun with HTC’s Sense UI, a customized overlay for Android that adds HTC’s stunning graphical interface to the sturdy Android OS. The UI will run on the new Hero, a 3.2-inch touchscreen phone running at 528MHz with MicroSD slot. More specs on the phone: With its 3.2-inch HVGA display, the HTC Hero is optimized for Web, multimedia and other content, while maintaining a small size and weight that fits comfortably in your hand. It also boasts a broad variety of hardware features including AGPS, digital compass, gravity-sensor, 3.5mm stereo headset jack, a five mega-pixel autofocus camera and expandable MicroSD memory. HTC Hero also includes a dedicated Search button that goes beyond basic search, providing you with a more natural, contextual search experience that enables you to search through Twitter, locate people in your contact list, find emails in your inbox or search in any other area in Hero. The new Android UI will have something called “Perspectives,” a new method for connecting email, contacts, and social media automatically. This version will also be the first to support Flash natively. So here’s my assessment: Sorry, Palm: this is the new hotness. The HTC Hero with Sense does everything WebOS can do but it uses Android, a platform that is already popular with the geekerati and has a great install base. There wasn’t much to see in these versions – a short hands-on appears below – but you’re looking at what promises to make Android the real killed feature-phone OS: customizability with an eye on processor intensive “data linking.” The parts we saw of the OS promise contact linking, which will allow you to add social media aspects to contacts. Instead of a name and address you can add Flickr streams, Twitter info, and other goodies. The changeable UI based on activities – the weekend vs. weekday screens – promises fewer distractions during key points in your life (i.e. when going out with the kids you can hide your email). Most importantly, however, this is Android. It has a full app store. Oh, and it has Flash. As I’ve said, Android is the next WinMo. It’s the more powerful smartphone OS for business and casual users and because it is open it can be customized to your liking in seconds. OEMs will lap it up because it’s free. More in a bit. → Read More
So we just got word that HTC will be the first manufacturer to bring Adobe Flash to the Android platform with the release of its new Hero / Sense device. If you needed more proof that Android is here to stay and will not sit on the sidelines in the mobile operating systems game, this is it. If you think about it, the iPhone is now the only platform with substantial weight on the market that doesn’t boast support for Flash.
With the new Flash Player 10 just around the corner and HTC officially joining the Open Screen Project, Android, Symbian OS, Windows Mobile, and Palm WebOS will be among the first platforms to support full web browsing and access to virtually all Flash-based Web content. → Read More
Just a little over a year ago Michael Barrett was shown the door at Fox Interactive/MySpace – he was, said insiders, the guy that took the fall when the company missed its $1 billion revenue target.
Fast forward a year and things look pretty good for Barrett. His former boss is long gone from Fox Interactive and shuffled to a new job at News Corp. MySpace is on the ropes. Meanwhile Barrett, landing solidly on his feet, is running one of the hottest online advertising startups in New York: AdMeld.
The company already raised $7 million in funding late last year. Today they’ll announce an new $8 million round, bringing the total to $15 million. Existing investors Spark Capital and Foundry Group led the round. → Read More
I’ve been rounding up a lot of ultralights(more about that next week) – I wouldn’t call this a netbook – and this looks to be one of the purdiest of the bunch. The 5101 will cost about $449 and runs an Atom processor. It has a 10-inch screen and full keyboard.
Look for more of these “ultralights” to pop up this year. Notebook manufacturers have realized that selling a tiny laptop for $5 and a few bottle caps was not a very good strategy and so they’re rethinking this whole “netbook” moniker. You’ll see ultralights – smaller notebooks with more powerful hardware – and MIDs like the iPod Touch or whatever Nokia is planning. → Read More
The Regional Court in Hamburg, Germany, has fined file-hosting service Rapidshare a hefty €24 million ($34 million) and has ruled that the company must start proactively filtering certain content. The case was brought on by copyright protection association GEMA, which claims it represent over 65,000 composers, authors and music publishers across the globe.
Update: looks like we jumped the gun on this one. The cited amount of €24 million is actually the value of the subject matter of this injunction verdict as determined by court, not the actual fine (although it could become that much).
Following a request made by the organization, the Hamburg court ruled that Rapidshare is forbidden from making any of 5,000 music tracks from GEMA’s collection available on the Internet. To comply, the company needs to make sure all of those tracks are removed from its servers and also ensure that they are not uploaded again by users. How the company is expected to do the latter, especially since many users upload files in ZIP format and password-protect them, is a mystery to me. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
