This past week saw the resurrection of Net Neutrality as a divisive issue. Some folks (people like Google, and, well, us) are in favor of Net Neutrality, while other folks (primarily the ISPs) are against it. Not long after the FCC announced its intentions, six Republican senators, three of which who received quite a lot of money from AT&T, proposed an amendment to a bill to stop the FCC in its tracks. The senators later rescinded their amendment, saying that they were now open to a “dialogue” with the FCC. → Read More
Sometime in the past two weeks I decided, with some thought being put into is, to buy a Zune HD. Why, I don’t know; I thought it looked neat, and I was thoroughly unimpressed with the new iPods Apple showed off at that Rock and Roll event. For the most part the Zune HD is, indeed, neat. Its user interface is miles ahead of the iPod’s, and, with a little forethought, can be used rather effectively with a dual-booting Mac. There’s just one small thing: you absolutely cannot read the display in direct sunlight. Don’t try to because you can’t. → Read More
Come back with me to 2001. A young man got up on stage one afternoon in November to announce something new and amazing: an operating system dedicated to tablet computing. That young man was Microsoft’s Bill Gates and that operating system was Windows XP Tablet PC edition. Chances are that is the first and last time you saw a working tablet computer. The thinking was this: if you can streamline appellations – data entry applications being the target here – you could sell smaller, more expensive computers to medical and business clients. It didn’t work and Windows Tablet PC has been little more than a clever solution to a nonexistent problem.
So what’s with all the tablet talk lately? → Read More
Last month, I published Part 1 of my Guide To Music On The Web, which covered music recommendation sites, Web radio, independent music sites, playlists, and music visualizations. Today, in Part II we’ll take a tour of music search engines, Web players, ways to share music on Twitter, and music mixing apps.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading all of your comments and insights on my previous post and of course, took them under consideration while creating this second part. Please bear in mind that I can’t list ALL the music applications out there. I really tried to find the best and the most used applications that will probably still be here to serve you tomorrow too.
So readers’ main concern was the companies’ business model. You are right. A few of the services might make an exit, and most of them are probably not going to have one, and some are just for fun. I think music services can make money by being innovative enough to get it. Anyway, I don’t want to get into the business model stuff too much, but I will tell you this: The Internet is too competitive, you may be succeed by just being simple, but you may also need to be sophisticated. The era where creating an application first, then two years later thinking how to make money from it, is bygone now, and companies will need to think how to make money sooner than later if they aim for it – This is where innovation comes in and usually wins. → Read More
Wine.com, a popular wine retailer with a fantastic domain name, is releasing its API for third-party developers to create and enhance wine applications connecting to the site’s e-commerce and wine database platform.
Wine.com’s database has detailed information on over 40,000 wines, including labels, wine maker notes, professional ratings, customer reviews, geographical information, flavor profiles and more. The API will offer access to Wine.com’s “Wine Basics” content, which includes information about the world’s major wine growing regions and grape varietals. → Read More
Koei Tecmo has a giant at this year’s Tokyo Game Show, and their flagship title surely is Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 for PS3. It was playable and looked pretty cool. The same is true for Quantum Theory by the way (another Koei Tecmo action game) whose early version was impressive graphics-wise (but pretty buggy unfortunately). → Read More
Sony’s God of War III for PS3 is playable at the Tokyo Game Show 2009, looks great and will go on sale in Japan in March 2010. The upcoming God of War Collection for the PS 3 (American version) will include a playable God of War III demo by the way (but the one seen at E3 2009). → Read More
Voiding warranties is half of fun of owning gadgets. I mean, who doesn’t want to take something apart to see what makes it work? And besides, you’ve got that workbench in the garage and a couple tools lying around, why not do something with them? → Read More
As we talked about the other day, sending text messages while driving is bad, okay? And in California it’s illegal. So do Americans listen? If you make it against the law to send text messages, will only outlaws text? → Read More
Short Version: Billed by Alienware as “the most powerful laptop in the universe,” the M17x is simply an amazing piece of hardware. It combines the latest in hardware with an extremely high-quality finish to create a laptop that is incredibly fast and well-designed. Unfortunately, it also might be the most expensive laptop in the universe. → Read More
TC50 DemoPit company AskYourTargetMarket is hoping to simplify market research for businesses and solutions by offering a comprehensive platform where businesses can both create and deploy surveys. Since the site is in closed beta, AskYourTargetMarket has offered 500 invites for TechCrunch readers. Each invite comes with a free survey package for up to 50 respondents; enter the beta code “TC50-2009″ here.
The site lets you define your target market demographic, then write a survey to distribute to focus groups. Because you are able to target a particular group, you don’t have to waste space on your survey with demographic questions. Once your survey is finalized, AskYourTargetMarket will launch it to your desired demographic within their consumer panel for as little as $29.95 for 50 respondents. The site, which says it has thousands of U.S. consumers on their survey panel, draws its respondents from its sister site, InstantCashSweepstakes.com, which offers users a cash prize incentive for filling out surveys. → Read More
TechCrunch Europe threw a dedicated startup pitch event yesterday in London and – if we do say so ourself – it was a great success. We plan to do more of these kinds of events and, as I pointed out at the time, we will NEVER charge startups to pitch. They are selected by editorial, on merit only. The winner of the pitch competition was FestBuzz (pictured). The other startups to pitch were Kyubid, Aware Monitoring, Social Safe, Yoomoot, Fiabee, Notion Learning, Audioboo, Kohive, En-twyn and mywidz. → Read More
This year’s Vodafone Mobile Clicks competition was a battle between Dutch and UK startups with 3 finalists from either side of the Channel. The prize money was ramped up to €150,000 this year so it was all to play for in the fight between the cloggies and the rosbifs. The prize was awarded based on a combination of votes from the public, Mobile Monday members and an expert jury. The jury gave the finalists a hard time on stage (in particular Rummble and MyNameisE) with most questions focusing on the money. → Read More
I took the chance at Koei Tecmo’s booth at the Tokyo Game Show and played Undead Knights on the PSP for a while. As the name suggests, the game is about zombies. And there are knights, lots of them, who you can turn into zombies and let them kill off enemies for you. Undead Knights is PSP-exclusive and will go on sale in Japan on October 15 (USA: September 29). → Read More
Seriously, if your weekends are void of human contact and your nights are spent alone on Reddit, buy this GameCube. It’s $30. Then head over to eBay or Gamestop and snag some used games on the cheap too. My god, man, it’s only $29.99. For a GameCube! Buy it! → Read More
Wallets are a very personal thing. Generally speaking, once you find one you like, you stick with that one until it wears out, and then spend weeks trying to find a replacement that’s the same style, only to realize that they don’t make them anymore, and you’re going to have to find something else. This was my dilemma, so when I was asked to review the Flipside Wallet, I was a little dubious about how well I would like it, given how particular I am. → Read More
Sony laid out its motion controller plans the other day at the Tokyo Game Show and mentioned that Resident Evil 5 and LittleBigPlanet would be the first games to take advantage of the system. Well, freaks and geeks, wanna see some actually gameplay? ‘Course you do. → Read More
I’ve always liked how outspoken Tim Westergren of Pandora is. He’s not one of those all-too-common founders who puffs up his chest and gives rationalizations for why everything is great even as user numbers are sliding or a competitor is stealing momentum. When his company is in trouble—which Pandora was for most of its life—he’ll tell you in excruciating detail, even down to ugly employee lawsuits.
And that’s worked to Pandora’s advantage. Westergren did such a good job of warning the site’s rabid fans that the RIAA may be running it out of business that they once broke fax machines on Capitol Hill with complaints. Westergren gets what a lot of entrepreneurs don’t: It’s about survival, not ego. That’s especially true when you’re an online music company.
Of course, today Pandora is sitting pretty thanks to a hard work and a serendipitous one-two-three punch. → Read More
Knockoffs are nothing new, but usually they run some weirdo OS that’s skinned to look like the original, as with the HiPhone. Not so in this case: since Android is freely available to install on any hardware whatever, the primary difference will be the hardware, which doesn’t look that bad. The Tiger G3 is obviously a Hero knockoff, but it’s got a front-facing camera and DTV antenna — for $140 it might be worth grabbing just so you can pretend you have the original. → Read More
