Goodbye, Desktop Factory, we hardly knew ye. This company was supposed to offer a sub-$5,000 desktop 3D printer. Alas, they are no more and they’ve sold their IP and assets to an unnamed buyer. But a funny thing happened as we launched our effort to sell Desktop Factory. We found interested parties who do understand the exciting potential for this breakthrough technology. We found companies that value the industry and can visualize the myriad applications for this affordable printer. Most important, we have found organizations that engage with customers and truly want to be a part of this next major wave in additive fabrication. → Read More
Welcome to CrunchGear’s old-timey corner of fun. First, read this for a bit of charming reminiscence: When I was a kid growing up on a farm, most boys carried a knife to school and usually sharpened their own pencils. Getting a nice smooth point on a pencil was a matter of pride for most of us. It’s a sad comment on today’s society that kids carrying knives to school are now considered criminals. Those were the days, right? Anyway, Dr. Terry M. Trier shows us all how to make a ball and cage, an old timey toy, a whimsy, that consists of a cage with a ball trapped inside it. How is it made? Well, you have to carve the ball and the cage out of one piece, which is pretty tricky. → Read More
I bet you thought iFixit only tore apart Apple products and high-profile electronics. Not so! The Starbucks Barista is in fact not a barista but a machine that makes espresso. You could argue that’s what real baristas are as well, but we can talk about that another time. The Barista espresso machine is a good representative of the home-espresso machine world, and it isn’t some cheap piece of garbage, either. It’s got lots of real metal in there and… are those molex connectors? → Read More
Canadian photo sharing startup BubbleShare will be shuttered on November 15, 2009. Users were notified via email and a notice on the site’s home page.
The site, founded by Albert Lai, first launched in late 2005 and we immediately liked it: “Toronto-based online photo sharing BubbleShare is just wonderful, and ridiculously easy to use. Their interface team deserves a gold star or something…” Adding interface features like zoom just made it even more fun to use.
In early 2007 the company was sold to Kaboose Inc. (TSX: KAB), a small public “family focused online media company” in Canada, for US$2.25 million plus up to another US$750,000 based on an earn-out provision.
Some Kaboose assets, in turn, were acquired by Disney in April 2009 for $18.4 million. → Read More
One of the big problems with starting a new service that relies on user submitted data is getting people to actually use it — nobody is going to routinely boot up your app if they don’t have an incentive to do so. One way to tackle this problem is by working the service into a game, which is a technique that seems to be working quite well for Foursquare, a service that makes it easy to find your friends. GraffitiGeo is a new Y Combinator funded startup launching tonight that’s looking to combine similar gameplay elements to take on a different space: restaurant reviews.
At its core GraffitiGeo allows users to leave brief reviews of restaurants, or for those too lazy to do that, to simply leave a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ — it’s like a highly condensed version of Yelp, or a “Digg for the world”. → Read More
Mother of God. I used to have a TI-83 for calculus classes, but all I ever had on it was DrugWar and a little racing game that was as hard as nails. Come to think of it, how did I even get those on there? They must have been copied, device to device, all the way from the originals. We didn’t have the benefit of the internet at the time (at least, not as it is today).
But who knew there were full-fledged RPGs on the thing? I guess that, considering a large amount of high-school and college students are required to buy these things, it’s actually a pretty popular platform. There have to be 20 or 30 million of them out there at the least! → Read More
Ahhh, Apple. Their followers are always fanatical, spending days dreaming away when and what the next product announcement will be. I bet Dell and HP wish they had this kind of following. Since September is typically when Apple announces their new products, the webs are all abuzz with people guessing what new shiny thing will be coming out. Some are even writing wish lists, but of course like an abusive parent, Apple will snub them and ignore their cries for attention. → Read More
MAKE calls it an XY table, and I can sort of work out what that means. It’s like a giant Etch-A-Sketch, but it doesn’t sketch or etch. It just kind of moves around on a… is that a skateboard? And why does the contraption sound like the beginning of that one Air song off of Premieres Symptomes? I must be dreaming. Get it together, man! → Read More
These speakers are pretty crazy looking, but apparently they sound quite good due to the acoustic qualities of porcelain-enclosed cork. The raw design is eye-catching but a little busy, although the toaster-esque volume control looks totally awesome. You’re not going to pick them up at your local electronics store, though; they’re being custom made and are likely going to cost at least $400. → Read More
Are you the operator on your pocket calculator? Electro-Harmonix has a new Effectology video out showing how to recreate Kraftwerk’s Autobahn with some pedals and an electric guitar. There are lots of loops and lots of great guitar work. → Read More
Lord! It’s big as a man! Corsair’s new Voyager GT looks like a red-and-black beluga whale. I reviewed the old Voyager GT and found it to be as fast as they claimed, but that thing was actually the size of a thumb, unlike this monster. Look at it! → Read More
Today ExpanDrive, a company specializing in SFTP mounting services, announced that it has acquired Strongspace and BingoDisk from Joyent. Terms of the deals have not been disclosed.
ExpanDrive is a service that allows users to mount SFTP servers as volumes, making it possible to move files to and from FTP servers as if each server was an individual remote drive. The service is currently available for both Mac and Windows machines.
As the blog post explains, the ExpanDrive service previously offered no server for users to operate through, which essentially rendered the service useless for those without an SFTP server. With the acquisitions, however, the company is looking to relaunch as a consumer and SMB disk in the cloud – something that sounds a lot like a potential iDisk killer. Jeff Mancuso of ExpanDrive states that, with the pending product additions, the service is set to feature full mult-user access for SMB’s, small disk snapshots via ZFS, and much more. → Read More
I want live streaming video recording apps on the iPhone. You want live streaming video recording apps on the iPhone. Everyone wants live streaming video recording apps on the iPhone – except for Apple. Though such applications have been available through unofficial means for over a year now, Apple remains mum on the matter. There they sit in Apple’s review queue, rotting away beneath an “In Review” label. Looking to find some way onto the platform, developers have begun to scale back their applications until they reach a point Apple is willing to greenlight. We saw it earlier this month with Ustream’s streamless app, and now Qik has followed suit. Beginning today, Qik’s own sans-streaming app is available for the iPhone 3GS. Like the Ustream app, Qik’s new tool is primarily for pre-recorded video already camped out in your Camera Roll. You can also record video on the spot, but uploading does not begin until the recording is complete. Though not a completely cutting-edge concept, Qik does claim a couple of firsts: Auto Uploading: If you record within the app, videos are uploaded immediately after shooting is complete. Record video in either portrait or landscape mode. Geotagged video uploads, based on your position at the time of upload Auto uploads to Facebook, Youtube, and various blog services. It’s not the jailbreak-free streaming solution we’re dying for, but it’s the best we’ll get until Apple gets friendly with the concept. CrunchBase Information iPhone App Store Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
When FriendFeed launched new themes back in June, I wanted but one feature: The ability to create my own. Today, I got my wish.
Despite being purchased by Facebook for close to $50 million earlier this week, FriendFeed is still rolling out new features. Today brings customizable themes, which allow you to tweak your template to make it as pretty or as ugly as you would like. Naturally, I’m going for ugly, as I stated my desire to mimic the excellent “Eggplant Orange Juice With Blood” theme I created for Gmail when that service launched customizable themes. → Read More
Vodafone UK is offering €150,000 to the top three mobile internet startups in its annual Vodafone Mobile Clicks competition to promote and accelerate innovation in the mobile internet sector. There are six finalists from the UK and the Netherlands in the running, all of which have of course been covered by TechCrunch Europe at various times in the past. In the red corner, representing Routemaster buses, Beefeaters and chicken tikka half and half, we have: → Read More
I do believe the GM build of Snow Leopard, Apple’s latest version of Mac OS X, has leaked onto the Internet. The build in question is 10A432. I see it on one popular Web site, but I shan’t be downloading. Even I can afford $30! → Read More
Today SAP and LinkedIn have struck a deal in which LinkedIn will provide the software vendor’s channel partners with recruiting and business social networking services. The announcement marks the first collaboration effort between the two companies since October 2008, when SAP Ventures took part in the social network’s largest funding round to date.
According to the statement, SAP partners with up to 1,000 employees will benefit from the LinkedIn Recruiter Basic Starter Package, an online service that allows recruiters to search the social network’s directory for a candidate based on preassigned attributes and criteria. The package also includes a simple job posting service referred to as LinkedIn Jobs Network. Pricing information was not mentioned specifically in the release, but it appears that the services will be offered at a discounted rate.
The announcement marks a huge step in LinkedIn’s mission to build enterprise appeal. Until recently, only the most Web savvy companies have truly taken advantage of LinkedIn’s potential in sales, CRM, recruiting, and other everyday business activities. The social network now claims that over 1,000 companies currently utilize the network, and with the recent help of SAP the service is set for a whole new level of business exposure. → Read More
For many people, the term “Scavenger Hunt” conjures childhood memories of running around the neighborhood on a quest for knickknacks like thimbles and socks — an experience that loses its luster beyond the age of ten or so. But as it turns out, they’re big businesses: major corporations and universities have successfully used more elaborate scavenger hunts as team building exercises, and a well-designed course can be extremely fun. SCVNGR is one young startup that’s managed to tap into this niche market very successfully, and today it’s launching a new consumer platform that will allow anyone to build their own scavenger hunts, which will work with any mobile phone. The new platform, called XPLR, is now in private beta, and the first 100 TechCrunch readers to go here and enter the code ‘TECHCRUNCH’ will be able to sign up and build their own missions.
In conjunction with the news, the company is also announcing that it has closed a $750,000 funding round from Highland Capital. → Read More
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