The first video game system in the Aamoth household was the Atari 2600. My parents bought it used from our next door neighbors, wrapped it up, and put it under the Christmas tree. Pitfall! was one of the handful of games that accompanied our new-to-us Atari. If you’re over the age of 30, you may have played the game more than a few times. Even if you’re under 30, you’ve likely heard of Pitfall! or played one of the many remakes. → Read More
Just got this email. It’s a bit presumptuous considering the common expectation is that you don’t author your own Wikipedia entry.
Basically Jimmy is asking me to become a fan of his Facebook page but does Jimmy really need fans? And does he have to launch such a personal appeal? He’s a heck of a guy, I’m sure, but what’s in it for me? → Read More
I Took My Flash Drive On A Saturday Tweetup “Boy Is That Flash With You” “Yes We’re One And The Same” Now I Believe In Gigabytes And An 2 Gig Model Is Shipping Tonight But, If You’re Thinkin’ About My Flash Drive It Costs $19.99 And Comes In Black And Green → Read More
Like the Sky deal before it, Xbox 360 users in France will soon be able to view Canal+ content on their TV set. Users will have access to some 3,000 movies on demand and eventually Ligue 1 soccer. → Read More
They may be mysterious and perhaps even a bit shady, but secondary equity markets, which allow employees to sell off their shares to other buyers, are quickly heating up. Because of the rarity of IPOs and acquisitions in the startup world these days, early employees and founders are becoming increasingly anxious to convert some of their shares into cash (one need look no further than reports of employees selling Facebook stock at relatively low prices for proof).
Unfortunately, because these markets are trading shares of private companies, buyers and sellers are often left in the dark as to the worth of their stock. SharesPost, a private equity market that’s currently operating in public beta, is looking to help: the site has launched a publication platform for analyst reports meant to complement its equity market. And it’s offering a free two month membership to TechCrunch readers, which you can sign up for here.
As a teaser for what’s available on the platform, the site has shared two valuation reports on some of the world’s biggest social networks: Facebook and LinkedIn. You’ll want to check out the full reports here and here to read the full analysis and methodology (you may have to register). → Read More
I’m so excited. MediaMall has updated its DLNA software, PlayOn, to support local network media playback within the app. The streaming app was always a solid way to playback Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube on any DLNA device like the Archos devices, the PS3, Xbox 360 and so many others. In fact, this was Digeo’s solution to bring Internet media to the Moxi HD DVR. However, the app never supported playing back content off of the local network which means users had to also run TVersity or TwonkyMedia. Now, PlayOn can do it all.
But that’s not why I’m excited. I’m stoked that this update finally, finally brings .avi and .mkv support to the Moxi HD DVR. If you’ve followed my coverage of the TiVo-competitor, you should know that the lack of support of those file extensions was one of my biggest complaints against the DVR. But MediaMall has stepped up where Digeo dropped the ball. → Read More
Last week, Michael Jackson’s death caused sites to fail left and right. Today, it’s a very different problem. The hosting service Rackspace has been completely down for the past 30 minutes or so. Don’t believe us, just listen to Justin Timberlake or Michelle Malkin, both of which have sites on the service and took to Twitter to complain.
Apparently, it’s an entire network outage and so the usually very responsive Rackspace team cannot even respond to emails or tweet (though I’m sure we’ll be seeing some updates from smartphones shortly). Along with sites like Timberlake’s and Malkin’s, the popular event site, EventBrite, is apparently down as well. → Read More
At the beginning of last year, Yahoo made a fairly large acquisition with the purchase of online video distribution and advertising platform provider Maven Networks. Under the terms of the agreement, which we reported as a rumor the same day the papers were signed, the company acquired the startup for approximately $160 million. At the time, the press release touted the acquisition to lead to an expansion of the “state-of-the-art consumer video and advertising experiences on Yahoo.com and Yahoo’s network of leading premium video publishers across the web”.
Now we’ve learned Yahoo is going to kill Maven Networks instead, the most recent in a long series of deadpooling of products and services by the Sunnyvale Internet behemoth. (also see update) → Read More
Even though I live in Japan, I admit I don’t know anything about Origami and other techniques to build objects out of paper. Today is also the first time I heard of the Pellermodel concept, the art of creating “true 3D paper objects”.
Now Bandai is planning to sell “Pellermodel” (brand name) kits, which make it possible for users to build a small, humanoid-like 3D object with one’s own face on it (or that of anyone you like). All that users need to do is to upload a face picture, access Bandai’s dedicated Pellermodel website [JP], print and attach the picture on the model’s head. Your “3D” figure can then be pressed out in seconds. → Read More
Now, I can’t attest to the legitimacy of this spec list leaked by PhotoRumors, but let’s take a gander at what the GX-30 is purportedly equipped with. Assuming you understand the relationship that Samsung has with Pentax then one would assume that the GX-30 is simply a clone of the recently announced K-7. But is the GX-30 just that? A clone? → Read More
We’ve been a bit baffled by the system Apple has in place when it comes to ratings for applications in the App Store. Is it allowing apps with nudity? Not allowing them? Allowing them with a 17+ rating? We’ve talked to some developers willing to break their NDAs because they think the App Store approval process in general is messed up, and would like to see Apple do a better job handling it. So here’s how the ratings system currently works for the App Store.
The Ratings
When you go to submit your app through iTunes Connect, one of the steps takes you to a ratings matrix that you must fill out. This contains 10 questions listed under “Apple Content Descriptions.” For each of the 10 questions you must say “None”, “Infrequent/Mild”, or “Frequent/Intense.” Depending on what answer you give for each of these, the rating of your app in the upper right corner will change. These ratings go from “4+” to “9+” to “12+” to “17+” to “No Rating.”
That last one is key. If your app gets the “No Rating” label, a warning written in red appears underneath it stating that: “This content will not be sold via iTunes.” So what triggers such a rating? Well, not a lot. Basically, it comes down to the final two questions in the 10 question matrix. Let’s run through them in descending order: → Read More
Digg founder Kevin Rose, Founders Fund partner Sean Parker and leading Israeli angel investor Yossi Vardi will return to our third-annual TechCrunch50 conference Panel of Experts September 14 – 15 in San Francisco. Our experts judge the fifty startups launching at the event and discuss each of the demos on stage as a group. Yossi, Sean and Kevin were experts last year and return based on popular demand with Roelof Botha, Marc Andreessen and Marissa Mayer. We have an amazing line-up of new and returning experts, and additional judges will be announced over the coming weeks.
If you’re a new startup, and want a shot to launch at TechCrunch50 and pitch our expert advisors on stage, you have until June 30 to submit your application. That’s tomorrow night.
All the details for the conference are here. TechCrunch50 is an action-packed conference where fifty new startups launch over two days. The event will be held at the San Francisco Design Center, a huge and beautiful venue where we packed nearly 2,000 participants last year.
Tickets for the event can be purchased here courtesy of Eventbrite (extra early-bird pricing is available until June 30).
More on the TechCrunch50 blog. → Read More
When will that StarCraft II beta come out? We don’t know, but that won’t stop us from speculating! → Read More
I don’t know if you guys are aware, but nothing is better for making people think you’re awesome than doing card tricks. No, seriously. Anyone you know with a ton of friends only has so many friends because of their card trick repertoire. Actually, there is one thing that’s cooler than doing card tricks: doing card tricks with virtual cards. For maximum cool, it must be done on an iPhone. Just when you started to think such incredible feats were impossible, David Blaine has saved the day with an iPhone app: David Blaine’s Street Magic: See-A-Card by David Blaine [brought to you by David Blaine]. For just $1.99, you can get all the benefits of knowing a card trick without actually learning a card trick. Whoever said you can’t buy friends? → Read More
Supposedly, the The Pirate Bay guys were found guilty in their recent trial in Sweden, and, supposedly, they got sentenced to a year in prison and had to pay $4.5 million in damages. But back in the parallel universe which happens to be the real world, they’ve appealed the verdict and could probably do so for the next few years. Which means that in the meantime they need to keep busy, and what better way to do this than start a new user driven video portal to take on YouTube. Seems reasonable. It’s not like they need to attract any more legal interest or anything. OK, the VideoBay site currently doesn’t have much – a big logo, a search box which doesn’t yield much and some explanation: To stay in the spirit on which TPB was founded and using the Latest Technology™, TVB aims to use the new HTML5 features, more specificly the and tags with the ogg/theora video and audio formats. This site will be an experimental playground and as such subjected to both live and drunk (en)coding, so please don’t bug us too much if the site ain’t working properly. However, they’ve “decided to give everyone a sneak peak” but it didn’t work for this particular browser. A supposed sneak peak at thevideobay.org/20/ didn’t work either. In fact it appears the site is riddled with 401 errors, so it’s not an auspicious start. Update: Those who want to try out need a web browser that supports the HTML 5 tags such as the latest Firefox Beta or Safari 4. According to TorrentFreak. The Pirate guys say there is still a lot of work to do behind the scenes – the encoder is not finished yet and the design is also a work in progress. And they’re not in a hurry, their window is “in, like, a year or five.” So what’s the big idea? Well in common with their stated views the idea is to host and allow users to share video clips without having to worry about getting them taken offline due to copyright violations, in true Pirate Bay-style. Hello, YouTube, hear that? They actually announced this idea two years ago, but I daresay most thought they’d never pull the trigger on this particular cannon. → Read More
Through some bizarre law of the universe if you put two cables on opposite ends of an empty room and return an hour later, both cables will be tangled together in a knot. You can help to stem that tide somewhat by forcing yourself to adopt simple cable management techniques. There’s nothing fun or sexy about cable management but it can be simplified by using things like these Power Shelves. → Read More
LinkedIn has bolstered its position as America’s leading business social network by the month lately, with Germany-based Xing as the only company regarding itself a worthy competitor in the last few years. But now those days seem to be over – in the US and China, at least.
Today German newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt published an interview [GER] with Xing CEO Stefan Groß-Selbeck (who recently replaced founder Lars Hinrichs), and he revealed a couple of interesting tidbits of information about the future direction of his company (find a horrible, Google-translated version of the full interview in English here).
Talking in broad strokes, Groß-Selbeck said 3.5 million of the 7.5 million Xing members are based out of Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland. This isn’t really that surprising, given the background of the company. But the interview also marks the first time a Xing representative publicly (albeit indirectly) admitted losing in the USA and China. → Read More
You’ll be glad to know that New York City is drowning in iPhones 3GS while the rest of the state is showing iffy availability, The iPhone 3GS availability widget is up and working quite well so you may want to head over and check things out before you drive all that way to the mall, are seduced by the Cinnabon, and then have to go home empty handed and then drink yourself into a stupor. True story! → Read More
This Heli-Mission Swat truck is heli cool. It’s basically a helicopter inside a truck that you can drive around and then make the helicopter come out and do some missions like “flying into the coffee table” and “hitting the wall and breaking.” The truck/helicopter combo costs $99 and will be available soon, according to SlashGear. Video after the jump. → Read More
Steve Jobs is officially back at work, according to Apple PR. Even though he had a liver transplant earlier this year, a detail which was leaked to the Wall Street Journal and conveniently reported on a Friday night after the markets had closed. Last week, Jobs was spotted back on Apple’s campus and was even quoted in a press release! Today, Apple is hammering home the message that Jobs is back on the job, telling multiple news organizations from ABC News to Bloomberg to the New York Times to Reuters the exact same canned quote (sometimes attributed to spokesman Steve Dowling, sometimes not).
Steve is back to work, Jobs is at Apple a few days a week and working at home the remaining days. We are very glad to have him back.
