This morning we broke the news that Canopy Financial, no. 12 on this year’s Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies, is a complete sham.
And it’s no surprise that today, everyone is trying to point the finger at everyone else.
The company’s investment bank, Financial Technology Partners, which has represented Canopy Financial through at least two separate rounds of fraudulent fundraising, emailed to say: → Read More
You’ll find that opinions vary with respect to Tekken 6‘s netcode. I didn’t run into too many problems, but others certainly have. What are you going to do, right? Come November 26, you can, I don’t know, apply the update that will hopefully clear up some of those glitches. So that’s what you can do. → Read More
Worried that Uncle John might be hitting the Night Train a little too hard this holiday season? Well, now you can keep a closer eye on him, and avoid that lawsuit when he crashes into that parked cop car. → Read More
As fashion magazines, like Vogue, are trying to establish viable digital strategies, Lucky Magazine is making their first venture into the e-commerce world with the launch of a online retail site. Partnered with loyalty shopping technology startup Mall Networks, Lucky is rolling out a retail site that makes editorial picks “shoppable.”
The site will feature daily editorial picks on clothing, accessories, and beauty products. Users can then click to purchase the picks on various retail sites. You can filter results by category, designer, price range and store. Users can share products to Facebook, Twitter and save any items to an Amazon Wish List. The site also serves as a comparison shopping site between merchants, and features nearly 100,000 various fashion items from more than 450 brands. → Read More
Truth be told, I have no idea why I’m about to write this post, other than the fact that it’s in my little writing queue. You can’t fight City Hall. Here’s the deal: the Federal Government of the United States spent a bunch of money investigating various online marketing scams. How they work, what makes people fall for them, etc. Consumers lost some $1.4 billion to such scams. → Read More
Well, that was quick. We just wrote about this thing today and suddenly it arrives at the house. I installed it and was quite impressed. The depth of the music improved immediately with plenty of bass and a richer sound. Turning it off makes the music almost tinny, which is odd. → Read More
Ah, the curse of the groggy morning. You may have followed all the rules: no caffeine before bed, an early bedtime, and all the rest. But your best efforts are oftentimes for naught, foiled by the mysterious ways of sleep cycles. There may be an answer: WakeMate, a Y Combinator-funded startup that’s launching today, is looking to help you catch that ever-elusive good night’s sleep (and maybe even the perfect nap, too).
WakeMate is one of the few startups we’ve see that actually involves its own physical product (another that comes to mind is FitBit). To use the service, you first order the WakeMate wristband from the website, which costs $50. Then, you download an application for your Bluetooth-enabled smartphone (WakeMate is launching with support for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Mobile, and a standard Java app for non-smart phones; support for Palm’s WebOS is on the way). → Read More
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWAFxeHpmvs&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
If we applied Moore’s law to the art of DJing, we would probably get something like Amidio’s Touch DJ app. Gone are the software disk jockeys who replaced the original vinyl selectors. Now you can spin beats on your iPhone or iPod touch without listening to them. Wait, what? → Read More
Another Xbox 360 lawsuit? Oh, yes! Datel, which makes all sorts of video game accessories, has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft because it “has taken steps to render inoperable the competing Datel memory card for no visible purpose other than to have that market entirely to themselves.” → Read More
Mike Clark and Geoffrey Arone are preparing to roll out a new startup – SafetyWeb – we’ve confirmed. The company has raised a small angel round from Battery Ventures.
Clarke was an early executive and SVP of Engineering at Photobucket and was there from the start and for two years following the $300 million acquisition from FIM/MySpace. Arone, a cofounder of Flock, recently sold his startup DanceJam to SportsNet. Both are now full time on SafetyWeb.
For now the two aren’t saying much about the product. Except for this: SafetyWeb will target parents who want to know what their kids are up to online. This isn’t about filtering and key logging the home computers, but rather a service that will monitor publicly available information on the Internet and report back to parents. The key goals are to understand how to interpret real v. perceived threats to children/teens, and also report back any anomalies that the parents should be aware of. For example, if they friend someone who is a known sex offender, etc. → Read More
Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz is starting a new startup called Asana to solve enterprise collaboration, and he just closed a $9 million series A round from Benchmark Capital and Andreessen-Horowitz. this follows $1.2 million angel round last spring from investors including Ron Conway, Peter Thiel, Mitch Kapor, MySpace CEO Owen van Natta, Sean Parker, and former Facebook Director of Mobile Jed Stremel.
Moskovitz, who was Facebook’s first CTO, founded Asana with another former Facebook (and before that, Google) engineer, Justin Rosenstein. Matt Cohler, also a former Facebook executive who is now a partner at Benchmark, will be taking a seat on Asana’s board. And two of its investors, Marc Andreesen and Peter Thiel, currently sit on Facebook’s board. → Read More
Amazon announced some major changes to their Kindle e-book reader today. Specifically, it stated that they’ve worked out a way to increase battery life by 85%. That means that the new firmware update will allow you to leave your Kindle on (with the wifi active) for about 7 days before you need to recharge. Additionally, the Kindle will now support Adobe’s PDF format natively. Previously, you had to convert PDFs in order to view them on the Kindle. → Read More
Microsoft is losing its chief financial officer, Chris Liddell (pictured left), who will be departing the company at the end of the year. Liddell will be replaced by Peter Klein (below), the current CFO of Microsoft’s Business Division.
Lidell joined in May, 2005 from International Paper. The stock is at about the same place as when he joined. Liddell has overseen a period of cost-cutting and stock buybacks at Microsoft.
Klein heads up finance for Microsoft’s largest division, which includes the Office business. Last quarter, the Business Division brought in $4.4 billion in revenues and $2.9 billion in operating income, which was nearly twice as much profits as Microsoft’s Windows business. Microsoft is handing over the corporate CFO spot to theman with the most individual financial responsibility in the company. → Read More
If you’re like me, you’ve got a fair number of family and friends who don’t quite share the same level of enthusiasm for technology as you. But the thought of buying someone a gift that wasn’t a gadget? Insanity. Pure insanity. In that spirit, here’s a list of products that ought to make easy-to-use gifts for the technologically ambivalent in your life. → Read More
William Shatner did have a part in the new Star Trek as it turns out. It wasn’t a major role like Leonard Nimoy’s, but rather a recording that Nimoy’s Spock would give to the younger Spock at the end of the film. It obviously never made the film but I somewhat wish it had. → Read More
Yesterday, Facebook’s Dave Recordon commented that he just finished a marathon session of The West Wing, a great show about the inner-workings of a fictional White House that ended its run on NBC in 2006. I agreed with Recordon, it was a great show. You know who else agreed? Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
So why is this interesting? Well, the creator of The West Wing was Aaron Sorkin. He was also the executive producer and primary writer through the first four seasons. If you’ve heard Sorkin’s name in the tech sphere recently, it’s because he’s also the writer of the new Facebook movie, The Social Network, currently filming under the direction of David Fincher. → Read More
The holiday season is approaching fast, and that means one thing here at TechCrunch: more giveaways! Sure, we’ve given away Twitter gadgets and wireless music systems, but this is definitely the best giveaway yet by a mountain peak. In fact, the winner will be climbing a mountain in Peru to the fabled Inca city of Machu Picchu. Well, you and a guest will actually be on horseback most of the way, and staying in WiFi-equipped luxury eco-lodges. But you can walk part of the way just to say you hiked the Inca trail.
This 7-day adventure for two, which is worth about $7,000, is being donated by the tour operator Mountain Lodges of Peru in conjunction with ekoVenture, a marketplace for “experience travel” (read our recent post on them). You can enter the contest here to win the trip by using the secret code “ilovetc” (and if you want to retweet this contest or share it on Facebook use the buttons above). Airfare is not included, but everything else is. Mountain Lodges of Peru is a past recipient of National Geographic’s “50 Tours of a Lifetime” award so you’ll be in good hands. → Read More
It’s a long video at a second shy of ten minutes, but don’t worry, the action starts early around 2:30. The best part is that the bloke doesn’t even know what a Rick Roll is. Oh, and what’s up with his couch? → Read More
If we were to make a “Amazing ideas” list and a “Things that have totally failed to take off” list, there would be at least one item that you’d find on both: mobile video chat. Blame the carriers for not agreeing on a standard, or blame the consumer populace for not pressing hard enough; either way, its an idea that has been sitting on the launch pad for ages. That might be about to change. The popular P2P VoIP service Fring has just announced that they have begun to add support for Skype video calls to their messaging client. Skype has hundreds of millions of users, and this service allows for mobile-to-desktop calls – in other words, mobile video chat finally has a chance at being useful and — more importantly — used. For the time being, video chat support has only found its way into a handful of Nokia devices: the X6, N97 Mini, N97, 5800, N82, and N95. If you’re not touting an N-series device, fear not: Fring promises that support is “coming soon on other popular platforms”. Time to start adding front-facing cameras to your hardware again, manufacturers! → Read More
My general opinion is that laptops were made for laps. But sometimes your lap just isn’t convenient for comfortable for a laptop. There is no shortage of laptop stands, shelves, and supports available for purchase, but few strike the sweet spot that the AViiQ portable laptop stand does. It’s super thin, super light, and folds up to consume a negligible amount of space, making it a no-brainer to include in your already-full laptop bag. → Read More
