Earlier this afternoon, the TechCrunch office got some new additions: a collection of massive stickers, ranging from giant TechCrunch logos (you can see them on the CrunchCam) to various animals, a big donut, and even a surfing alien. They come from a new startup called Larger Than Life Prints, which is best described as a CafePress or Zazzle for humongous stickers. The company allows users to design their own oversized wall graphics, which can then be ordered in one-off runs or sold to other visitors through an integrated store.
The site is still fairly new, but’s already beginning to attract some top talent, including Susan Kare, who is famous for designing the on-screen graphics of the original Macintosh computer and many of Facebook’s popular virtual gifts. LTL Prints is featuring many of these artists in a collection of ‘big wall art‘, which includes art curated by the Start Soma Art Gallery. → Read More
Buying an actual tilt-shift lens will run you over $1000, depending on what camera you own. Of course, instead of buying a new or used lens, you can just build your own out of some PVC pipe, hose clamps, rubber hose, and a cheap lens off of an auction site. → Read More
This is a good idea: instead of having a big ol’ battery pack on your iPhone, or carrying around a bulky charger or solar what-have-you, just replace your regular USB cord with this little guy. It’s got a cell built into the cord that charges while you charge your phone, and then you can use the cord/battery without a connection to give your phone a boost later on. → Read More
Just three months ago MySpace cofounder and CEO Chris DeWolfe found out he was being abruptly and rudely replaced by Owen Van Natta. So what does the guy who built the biggest site on the Internet from scratch do next? He raises a big pile of money, that’s what.
We’ve confirmed that DeWolfe has been pitching a number of private equity funds to raise up to $100 million for a roll up of an Internet industry vertical. In exchange for confirmation we’ve agreed to keep exactly what that vertical is confidential for now. But at least two funds, both with significantly more than $1 billion to work with, are interested. DeWolfe, as is his style, won’t comment on the fundraising.
It’s not surprising that there is such strong interest. Few executives have been able to grow a company from zero to 1,700 employees and $800 million or so in revenue. In just five years. DeWolfe may be eccentric but he’s also clearly one hell of a business man and entrepreneur. And there is no one in the world with his connections and experience in both the geeky Internet world and flashy Hollywood scene. → Read More
Remember the GP2X I wrote about a couple weeks ago? It’s been reviewed by Rob at Boing Boing Gadgets. The verdict: pricey, but pretty much totally worth it if you’ve got the moolah. → Read More
At a time when most people are trying to decide whether 4GB is worth it, it seems a bit decadent to consider the case of 12GB. But the fancy-pants overclocking world doesn’t care about your netbooks or you petty “worldwide financial collapse.”
Sometimes, you just need to know how much is too much. → Read More
I feel real sorry for the folks that pre-ordered the fantastic Viliv X70 from Dynamism. Those customers should have gotten an email today explaining that the UMPC has been delayed by about two weeks. It seems that it goes back to the old saying of how things roll down hill as a delay from component suppliers has been passed on to the consumers. Dynamism now expects the first shipment to go out on August 11 instead of right now. But let me just say, that the UMPC is amazing and is worth the little bit extra wait. → Read More
Twitter has just rolled out the new version of its homepage that new potential users and users who are not logged in will see. The design has been completely overhauled from the previous version which was fairly cluttered (see it at the bottom of the page). This new version is sleek and features trending topics by the minute, hour and day.
Most importantly, the new version features search functionality front and center. This way people who aren’t even Twitter users yet can search for things being said on the service. And results are nicely placed on the same page below the main area.
You’ll also notice that when you click on any of the popular topics, a description of why that topic is being featured appears along the top of the search results. This is something that is very helpful, as quite a few trending topics seem to make no sense on the surface. It looks like Twitter is using the third-party service What The Trend? to populate these descriptions. → Read More
I understand this is Toshiba’s first foray into the world of large-form-factor external hard drives, but you have to give the thing a name. You can’t just call your product the “Toshiba 3.5-inch External HDD.” That said, the product itself looks nice. Good looking, shock-resistant, though at $160 for a terabyte, a little bit pricey. → Read More
Very nice. Any Nerf-Zapper-Super Soaker combo would be good, but Nerf Bow, Orange Zapper, and Super Soaker 50 wins pretty hard. Meet your new wallpaper. [via The Daily What] → Read More
It’s been a long time coming, but the computer industry is finally making headway in the switch from old-fashioned, platter based hard drives to the solid state drives (SSDs) found in iPhones and many other electronics. The benefits are obvious: unlike their platter-based counterparts, SSDs have no moving parts, and they’re also significantly faster for many tasks. Unfortunately most software, both server-side and otherwise, has been optimized for the older drives and the physical limitations that come with them. RethinkDB is a new startup that’s looking to capitalize on this problem by building a storage engine for mySQL databases that’s fully optimized for SSD drives, bringing with it large speed boosts and a number of features sure to catch the eye of many developers.
The company, which is part of the latest batch of Y Combinator-funded startups, is in fairly early stages (it started developing the product only two months ago), but it’s already making some substantial headway in the features it can offer. → Read More
The Onkyo DV-BD507 is headed to America, everyone. The AV company went all offical on the player last month with European launch info, but was mum about a US release. Well, it’s here and it looks great – including the price. → Read More
Years ago, Whittier Collge’s most famous graduate, President Richard Nixon, was discussing something in his office. His favorite aide, H.R. Haldeman, was there, too. What they were discussing, exactly, has become something of a legend in the former United States of America. You’ve heard of the 18.5-minute gap, yes? That’s what we’re concerned with today: what was said during those 18 minutes? Did they gossip about Twitter, or the fact that—SHOCK!—Apple is a bit of a control freak? No one knows… until now?! Maybe, friends. Maybe. → Read More
TuneIn, a new startup co-founded by Adam Hertz and former Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone, has raised a first round of funding – $500,000 from True Ventures and Mitch Kapor. Phil Black from True Ventures and Kapor join Lanzone and Hertz on the board of directors.
Lanzone is not working on the startup full time, he’s taking a board seat going forward.
TuneIn first launched a couple of weeks ago at our RealTime CrunchUp. It’s a web based Twitter client with a lot of additional features, including highlighting popular content from your network or anyone else you want to view. Lanzone has described it as “TiVo for Twitter” because it lets you peruse linked media and sites from your network.
The site has only rolled out initial features, Hertz tells me there is a lot more coming. Keep an eye on it.
Here’s the video of TuneIn’s debut at the CrunchUp: → Read More
The downloadable game libraries on current-gen consoles are making for a lot of “indie developer makes good” occasions. Cave Story, one of my favorite games ever, is coming to WiiWare after years of being PC-only freeware (recently ported to Mac). And now La-Mulana, also known as “the game so hard that I just gave up… twice” is coming as well. If you’re a fan of Metroid and Castlevania-type games, La Mulana is the holy grail. It’s unbelievably huge and totally uncompromising.
Kind of weird that it’s coming to Wii then, right? Zing! → Read More
Remember last summer when seemingly everyone on Twitter had a manga avatar? Then a few weeks later it was an old-style high school yearbook avatar? (I preferred to combine them, killing two birds with one stone.) Well, get ready for another invasion: Mad Men avatars.
The television station AMC has set up a website, MadMenYourself, to allow users to create cartoon representations of how they might look if they were on the hit show, Mad Men. The results are quite good, and the avatars are already quickly spreading on Twitter. → Read More
The 7-inch 800×480 Mimo monitor is a portable USB-powered display that’s easy to set up and use and ought to fit neatly in most laptop bags. At $130, it’s not outrageously priced, either, considering you’re getting a pretty capable second monitor that weighs just 1.3 pounds and requires only a single cable in order to operate. → Read More
I’ve now been given an extended demo of the Spotify iPhone app which is currently awaiting Apple’s approval. Unfortunately the guy who showed it to me managed to prize the iPhone with the app on it from my cold sweaty palms, so I wasn’t allowed to take the app away on my own iPhone (alas), however, screen grabs taken from the video they released this week illustrate how the app works very well. I can confirm that everything in the Spotify app works as the video showed it. It’s in fact a very simple application, but extremely easy to use and the sound is magically good. Here’s what I found: The Radio feature of the desktop software is not present in the iPhone app, nor is Play Queue. Otherwise pretty much all the essential features are there. You open up the app and see your playlists. You select a playlist and – even over 3G, not WiFi – the track streams almost immediately. → Read More
So, Microsoft had that contest where it would feature one user’s picture on Bing for an entire day — you know, the one I was mad about because you couldn’t submit keg stand pictures. The idea behind the contest was to have users submit their best summer vacation photos to a special Facebook group, where they could then be voted on. Well, now we have a winner. And it doesn’t exactly reek of summer.
The winning image (below), was one of 9,400 picture submissions. You’d think out of all of those, users would have found a more perfect summer vacation image than a giant lightning storm, but whatever, it is a good picture. → Read More
