That’s right, I’m going to be that guy since CrunchGear is maybe one notch above a random message board. As I suspected, Ron from <ron and Fez, is in Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony. (Apparently East Side Dave is in another upcoming Rockstar game. Let’s speculate which one!) His voice is in the game (continuing the trend of XM 202 guys being in the GTA games), and I’m going to spend my evening tonight trying to find it. The sad part is that I’m not even lying. I literally have nothing better to do with my time → Read More
Remember those Microsoft ads from a little over a year ago, the ones with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates trying on shoes? Of course you do; it’s all the Internet talked about for days. I present to you this shocking photo: Seinfeld using a Mac! → Read More
This is just too cool not to post. Look at that little thing. It’s genius. It’s just a bit of walnut or oak, carved into a shape that will keep your ear buds under control. I’m amazed at the sheer beauty and simplicity of the little thing. I don’t even know what to call it. Calling it a wire management device takes away from the sex appeal, but the product name of Wrap Wrap is lame. Idk, but I want one. $17. [via Gadget Lab] → Read More
Today, Netlog – the ‘European MySpace’ as they’re often referred to – is hosting a Partner Day at and around their global headquarters in Ghent, Belgium. The most important thing the company will be sharing is a look at their redesigned website, which has been in the works for about a year and is today being rolled out to a number of key countries. I got an exclusive preview of the revamped website from co-founder Toon Coppens, so here’s an impression of what it will look like and where they’re going with the social network.
Netlog currently sees about 250 million visits from 56 million unique visitors on a monthly basis and is handling half a million new sign-ups every week. Its main target has historically been young people (65% of its user base is between 14 and 24 years old) and with the redesign the company is clearly catering to that particular demographic, making the homepage much more visual and far less cluttered. You can see some screenshots of the impending new version below, along with a screen capture of the ‘old’ homepage. → Read More
Well that didn’t take long. Over the past 24 hours, Twitter has been steadily rolling out its new Lists feature to a bunch of new users. Yesterday, about 25% of Twitter saw them, today, it’s much higher. Or it was. Shortly, Lists will temporarily go offline for everyone, product lead Nick Kallen has just tweeted out.
Don’t worry, the lists you just spent hours curating are not being deleted, but your access to them is being disabled for a bit. The reason is that there are already performance issues cropping up, so Twitter is taking “30 minutes or so” to investigate, as Kallen puts it. → Read More
Data Robotics, a company that creates automated data storage products, has raised $10 million in Series E funding led by Focus Ventures with Greylock Partners, New Enterprise Associates, RRE Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures participating. Data Robotics previously raised $15 million in Series D funding from Greylock Partners, New Enterprise Associates, RRE Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures.
The company’ Geoff Barrall says the new funding will be used to produce more inventory and will fuel additional sales and marketing efforts. Data Robotics, which launched in 2006, produces Drobo, a series of self-managing storage products. Drobo products are scalable and designed to meet the data storage needs of small to medium-sized businesses and includes Data Robotics’ BeyondRAID storage technology. Barrall says that the company is seeing strong growth in the enterprise space, with yearly revenue of around $30 million. → Read More
We at CrunchGear are rarely at the forefront of fashion. However, once I reviewed the Vibram Five Fingers I knew I was onto something. Thankfully, there are other people out there who don’t think my love for foot gloves is not strange or weird. In fact, people wear these crazy shoes everywhere they go!
Take a look at BirthdayShoes.com. Editor Justin Owings gets testimonials from all over the world including folks who have run marathons in these things and other folks who stand around in India wearing them. Heck, even Sergey Brin is down.
Video after the jump. → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Winston Bumpus, Director of Standards Architecture at VMware. In this piece, Winston describes how the lack of standards inhibits customers from taking advantage of the full potential of cloud computing because of concerns regarding lock-in and huge investments in proprietary tools, formats and infrastructure.
Cloud computing is here. The vision of flexible, self service IT infrastructure is now within our reach. The term of cloud computing may be a new term, but the concept has been around for a long time. So what is different now? I would say two things are really allowing this to be a reality: virtualization and industry interoperability standards.
Virtualization has been a real game changer for IT infrastructure. It has changed the processes and the cost points. This has happened with the isolation, consolidation and mobility that virtualization provides. Removing the rigid bonds between hardware and the application systems that run upon them has allowed for quicker and easier deployment and increased mobility of workloads. These capabilities have truly enabled this vision of cloud computing. → Read More
You know if a given country, in this case Japan, is over-saturated with gadgets when you see stuff like this: A remote-controlled tissue box [JP]. I mean who doesn’t know the trouble you go through when you want to wipe your nose and that damn tissue box is like 3 feet away again?
But here’s some help. The so-called Running Tissue Box has a maximum range of 8m for the radio signal. It’s sized at 250×65×123mm and is available in white, red and black. → Read More
I actually like this idea. Kohjinsha recently showed off its dual-display 10-inch netbook, which runs Windows 7 atop an AMD Athlon NeoMV-40 CPU at 1.6GHz. The machine can be used as a netbook with a standard 10-inch display (it’s a swivel, screen) or a second 10-inch display can be slid out from behind the first to be used together for double the desktop real estate. → Read More
If your pockets are just beggin’ to be filled with an HTC Hero, your options thus far (assuming you’re in the US) have been limited. You could get one through Sprint or wait for Verizon’s Hero-esque Droid Eris – but either of those options means you’re on a modified, round-bodied Hero rather than the angled, chin-tastic Hero that nearly 70% of our readers prefer. You could import one of the original bodied Heros from the UK – but then you wouldn’t be able to get 3G on any US Carrier. If you wanted US 3G and an original Hero, you were out of luck – until now. → Read More
[France] As my first post on Techcrunch Europe I thought it could be interesting to give you some insights on the French market, and especially the situation regarding fund raising. So here is a list of (almost all) French companies in the web industry that have raised more than €1 million in 2009.
Divided into three categories (Web, Mobile & E-Commerce), they are ranked by decreasing amount, and then by date. Despite all my research, I cannot guarantee that this list is 100% exhaustive, but I am pretty confident that this list covers 95% of transactions made in 2009. Don’t look for a source for each line, they were too numerous. But the main ones were company or investor websites, Journal du net or Neteco and blogs etc – and of course previous articles published on TechCrunch → Read More
[Germany] Serial founder and investor Lukasz Gadowski constantly taps new online markets. In his latest venture, the entrepreneur from Berlin ( who is best known for his part in the success of Spreadshirt, StudiVZ, Brands4Friends and many German startups) now has plans to emulate Citizen Kane and become a major league publisher.
The European is the name of his new online publishing venture for debate and opinion. More than 20 high class journalists will be using it to cover global issues. This could end up being the European Huffington Post (at least, for Germany). → Read More
Following its meeting with developers yesterday, Facebook announced some changes it will be making to its homepage. As expected, one of the biggest changes is an attempt to fight application spam.
Notifications from apps that you sign up for are being curtailed so that you can opt to only see those notifications that your friends explicitly send to you. That should get rid of all those random updates about Joey sending some virtual bananas as a gift to someone else you don’t care about. Facebook will also allow users to specify which applications may contact them via email and for what purposes, much like when you register for any Website and they ask you if they can send you marketing newsletters. → Read More
Jeezum crow! This guy has made a fully functional (kind of) Proton Pack from Ghostbusters including a trap, ecto goggles, and some coveralls. He added a few lights controlled by an Arduino board.
The best part? He added lasers to the blasters. Now he just needs to remember not to cross the beams and that your halloween party can be a promotional expense so you should invite clients instead of friends. → Read More
Reader Anthony Le sent in his entry for the costume contest and I just had to share it with you guys. It’s an amazing replica of the Iron Man XD suit made of plastic and rivets. Anthony even goes to his local Children’s Hospital in it to cheer up the kids. Anthony is a truly geek who inspires awe. I based the build from this picture from comic-con. The Costume is 100% home made, the build took approximately 2 weeks and 5 days. I’m a very busy person as well! Over 700+ rivets and rivet washer used. All items on the costume are 100% made from scratch. I’ve lso taken this costume to the children’s hospital to give them a sense of joy to know that a hero has come to wishes them a happy Halloween. → Read More
The first phone in what will eventually become a line of Droid phones only became a reality yesterday morning, and its sibling is already in tow.
We already know a bit about the HTC-made Droid Eris, such as its $99 price tag and that it’s likely to be spec’d almost identically to the Hero. We’re suckers for the minute details though, and PhoneArena just uncovered a doc which confirms a couple new ones. → Read More
Y combinator’s annual startup school event was held in Berkeley last Saturday and featured a stellar lineup of speakers including the founders of Twitter, Facebook and Zappos. The founders speaking were almost universally charming and funny, even Mark Zuckerberg who I was determined to dislike (he does look around 12 though). This reinforces my belief that charm goes a long way in business.
Jason Fried of 37 Signals gave one of the talks which seemed most relevant to European startups. His business partner is actually from Copenhagen and they worked together for 2 years before meeting in person. Here’s a summary of his presentation and a chat I had with him afterwards. → Read More
If you long for the ability to watch high definition TV on a seven-inch screen that’s resolution is a mere 480×234 but you also want to have the option to watch standard definition DVD’s as well, then here’s your next purchase.
According to Hammacher Schlemmer, this is “The First Portable HDTV And DVD Player.” → Read More
