On one hand, the Addonics Pocket Blu-ray/DVDRW packs eSATA and USB 2.0, but it isn’t the first portable Blu-ray player drive. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Fastmac released an external Blu-ray player drive back in January at Macworld, which I believe was the first external Blu-ray drive. I guess eSATA isn’t that important to me and the $259 price tag is a bit much considering the Fastmac drive is $120. Read and write speeds are nothing to drool over either. → Read More
It was just a matter of time. With the Archos Android announcement scheduled for September 15, the boys at the FCC have splayed the Android-powered MID that popped up on the AppsLib site. The A5S (#7501) was tested with a 5-inch touchscreen, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and FM transmitter/receiver. → Read More
When you are coming from behind, embracing openness is always a good strategy. That is exactly what Sony is doing with its electronic book reader, which is up against the Amazon Kindle. The key to the Kindle’s success is that it is paired with the largest book store in the world, where most people likely to buy an electronic book already have accounts.
Sony is trying to fight this advantage by being more open and thereby attracting other large players into its sphere of influence. Its biggest ally in this fight is Google, whose M.O. is to attack closed industries with open technologies. Today, Google is making available more than one million public domain books in the open ePub format, which also happens to be the linchpin of Sony’s open strategy.
Yesterday, at the unveiling of Sony’s latest electronic book reader at the New York Public Library, the head of its ebook division, Steve Haber, emphasized: “”You want a ubiquitous experience: open, open open.” He repeated the mantra in the way that Steve Ballmer says, “Developers, developers, developers,” except he said it a little softer since he was in a library. → Read More
NetVibes, the startup that lets you assemble all your favorite widgets, feeds, social networks, email, videos and blogs onto a customizable homepage, is rolling out a new feature today that lets users create personalized widget-based web pages. NetVibes’s tool, called Theme Publishing, is a visual design editor that lets users personalize and edit every part of their page’s’ theme, from images to background.
The layout of the editing tool is fairly simple. Users “click and pick” on the page:, meaning they click which part they want to edit and pick options from a color palette and design option menus. NetVibes offers a directory of themes or you can create your own theme. You can also publish your theme to the gallery for other NetVibes members to use. Every change is shown live in a preview pane, making it easy to see how a particular design will look. Plus, users can add widgets, feeds, social networks and more to their pages. The bonus: it’s all free. → Read More
Most things just aren’t built to last these days. Computers, cell phones, vehicles, televisions — good luck getting ten years out of any of them. Then there’s Tactical Canned Bacon. It’ll last for ten years. Ten. Years. → Read More
Suddenly Apple’s competitors see a weakness in the iPhone, and it’s Google Voice. We’ve heard from a source close to Palm that the company plans to roll out deep integration with Google Voice on the Pre phones for users who want it. That could convert a lot of iPhone users to the Palm Pre fast. But there’s just one problem: at this point, Google isn’t building an app for the Pre.
Google Voice gives users a lot of freedom with their phone – they can ring several mobile and landline phones at once through one number, manage text messages, auto-transcribe voicemails and also block/manage callers depending on who they are and when they are calling. Want to switch phones or carriers? If you use Google voice, you don’t have to port your phone number or tell everyone what your new phone number is.
Which is exactly why Apple fears it. → Read More
We all know and love Fake Steve Jobs, right? We all know that Linux users copy everything that Mac OSX and Windows do, right? So it should come as no surprise that the Linux Foundation is copying Fake Steve in their new Fake Linux Torvalds competition! Not content with a single fake Linus Torvalds, there will be four fake Linus Torvaldses (Torvaldi?)! And in true Linux geek fashion, the competition will take place on both Twitter and identi.ca, the free software micro-blogging alternative! → Read More
Balihoo, a service that looks to help national brands efficiently market themselves at the regional level, has closed a $7 million funding round led by OpenView Venture Partners, with existing investors Highway 12 Ventures and Lacuna Gap Capital also participating. The new round brings Balihoo’s total funding to over $12.5 million since getting started in 2006.
Balihoo is a service that allows national brands to automate local marketing efforts — campaigns that have tradionally been run by franchises and affiliates. This setup can lead to a lack of consistency in branding between different regions, as well as excessive costs as regional franchises effectively have to remake the same advertisements. → Read More
Aaaand here we have the only charging cable you’ll ever need. Is it a tangled mess waiting to happen? Perhaps. But you could safely misplace most, if not all, of your other USB charging cables. Plus, it looks like a sea monster! → Read More
Let’s clear the air real quick. Ed Hardy is one of the godfathers of modern tattooing and he learned from the best, Sailor Jerry. Christian Audigier, on the other hand, is a big douche. He whored out Kenny Howard aka Von Dutch (even though the guy was a drunk and racist) and now he’s done the same with Ed Hardy over the last few years. → Read More
There’s always been a tension in search between organizing information for users and getting out of the way so they can get to that information as quickly as possible. With text links, getting people to the correct page as fast as possible usually produces the best experience. But when it comes to video, which is a self-contained form of information, a better search experience is to be able to play the video right in results. Otherwise, in addition to clicking back and forth until you find the video you want, you are also adding the delay of playing the video.
Video search sites like Blinkx and Google Video (yes, that is still around) figured this out ages ago. And Bing’s video search lets you play a video simply by hovering over the thumbnail, or you can click to enlarge for a more satisfying viewing experience.
Now Yahoo is finally getting with the program. → Read More
MSI’s got a 12-inch Wind netbook rolling out to the US in the next few weeks. The U210 will feature an AMD CPU, though, which ought to place it in direct competition with Gateway’s LT3100. We can probably expect to see shorter battery life (the LT3100 promises five hours) in exchange for some extra power over Intel’s Atom offerings. → Read More
We’re pleased to announce Don Dodge (Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team), Paul Graham (Cofounder of Y Combinator), Jason Hirschhorn (MySpace Chief Product Officer), and Mike Schroepfer (Facebook VP Engineering) will be joining our on-stage panel of experts at TechCrunch50. They’ll judge the fifty launching startups in front of a crowd of 2,000 or so eager attendees.
They’ll join the already announced expert lineup of Marc Andreessen, Roelof Botha, Ron Conway, Reid Hoffman, Tony Hsieh, Marissa Mayer, Tim O’Reilly, Sean Parker, Kevin Rose, Robert Scoble, and Yossi Vardi.
This will be Don’s third year judging. Paul, Jason, and Mike will be making their first appearances. And we’re not stopping here – additional judges will be announced next week.
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. We’ve slashed our early-bird prices from 2008 to $1995 through August 31. (Prices escalate to $2,995.) If you’re interested in demoing your product, we have a few spots left in our DemoPit (e-mail us for details). Additionally, exhibitor passes are available for $8,000, which include entry to the conference for 4 people, a 5’ exhibitor table, and other goodies.
More on the TechCrunch50 blog. → Read More
Word on the street is that Sony will release a PSP-4000. You act surprised. → Read More
NeXplore, best known for its Web 2.0 optimized search engine, has announced the acquisition of a Web-based operating system and application suite from Milana Corporation, a Seattle-based desktop software developer.
The acquisition will enable NeXplore to offer a cloud-based personal desktop, replete with an array of free SaaS desktop applications for managing and consolidating email accounts, contacts, calendars, music, projects, and more. “The convenience of having universal access to a personal, application-rich desktop and a single, secure place on the Internet for managing and storing virtually every facet of a person’s computer and Internet activity aligns perfectly with NeXplore’s mission to radically improve the online experience for everyone,” said Edward Mandel, chief executive officer for NeXplore Corporation.
NeXplore seems to be taking a page out of Google’s book with the move, hoping to gather users around its core search product with a bundle of free peripheral applications. The company states that the desktop-as-a-service offering to be available to registered users in Q4 2009. → Read More
The plastic MacBook that I’m typing on right now has been around for three long years now, but if you believe certain Barclays Capital analysts it’s about the be completely redesigned. About time! → Read More
$63 BILLION. That’s how much we’re spending each year to keep our devices primped and powered. In the U.S. alone, the average mobile phone owner spends roughly $60 on accessories over the life of their phone. I mean, we all go through chargers fairly regularly, but $63 BILLION-worth? According to ABI Research (which conducted the, well, research), it’s not just chargers, but all the other usual suspects as well: → Read More
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is heading to Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco today to do a live streaming webchat with co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone. Oddly, Twitter hasn’t posted about it on its blog, but much of the company is atwitter (see what I did there) over the arrival. And so is the Governor, who tweets, “If you want to send in questions for my webchat at twitter hq with @ev and @biz, now is the time. You snooze, you lose.”
So what’s the purpose behind the Governor’s visit and the webcast? Well, Schwarzenegger has just launched a new Twitter-based site for California, MyIdea4CA.com. Yes, he’s using the social network to crowd-source ideas for how to run the state. Here’s the way the site describes how the process works: → Read More
Hot on the heels of the recently-reported Nokia Booklet 3G netbook, word on the street is that Nokia’s also planning an ARM-based smartbook as well (not pictured above). → Read More
