What we have here is a sort of Freddie Prinze Jr. movie dork makeover event, except applied to an 18-button mouse. You don’t see it? Let me break it down for you. Freddie Prinze Jr. is the Internet (obviously). The hot, bitchy girls are Razer and Logitech; they’ve got it and they know it. OpenOfficeMouse is the secretly hot nerd who was brought to the Internet’s (that’s Freddie Prinze Jr.’s, if you recall) attention but kind of passed up because she/it was so plain.
But just in time for Prom/Christmas/CES, the hot nerd gets a sweet makeover and ends up so sexy that the Internet can’t keep its hands off her buttons! → Read More
While I wouldn’t say, as MSI does, that this laptop is “Shattering the Boundaries of Ultra-thin Technology,” it does look like a hot little item. It’s got a 15.6″ screen but is only an inch thick, which is a pretty good ratio. Its shiny black finish (scratch-proof but somehow I don’t think fingerprint-proof) will attract eyes wherever you go, and the 6-cell battery means it won’t crap out on you while they’re watching. → Read More
For quite a while now now, one of the biggest problems with Android has been its app support. In particular, the Facebook application has been quite limited: you could read your News Feed, but many of the app’s functions actually kicked you into a separate browser window and weren’t done in the native app. Today, that changes.
A new version of Facebook for Android is now live on Android Market, and it’s a big improvement. I’m still playing around with it to find the various changes, but the app’s description points out two big ones: you can browse your friend’s profiles and photo albums natively. Given how core both of those features are to the Facebook experience, it’s surprising that they weren’t there to begin with. Suffice to say, this is a big leap forward for the app, and users are already expressing their delight on Twitter and the Market’s integrated reviews. → Read More
Moments after we heard reports of Facebook’s new URL shortener, Google launched its own service, aptly called goo.gl.
At the moment, its only being used for Google Toolbar and Feedburner. Google just announced the new service as a sharing feature of Toolbar that will let you share a web page directly from Toolbar. The shortener is not a stand alone service and is not available for “broader consumer use.” That is, at least for now. Google assures that its shortener will be stable and secure to help protect users from clicking on malicious sites. And unsurprisingly, Google promises a speedy service for links. → Read More
[Greece] Truth to be told, there aren’t many Greek startups who are lucky enough to raise Venture Capital money. While TechCrunch Europe reported back in June that a new Greek seed level fund called OpenFund had launched to try and address the problem, Greek property listings site, “Spitogatos“, has shown the way. The startup has raised €750k from Oxygen Capital, an Athens-based VC firm.
Spitogatos claims to be the largest property listing website in Greece and Cyprus with more than 125,000 unique visitors per month. The site features around 130,000 property listings (for sale and rent) in both countries. The startup also says that more than 2,500 registered real estate agencies in Greece upload their property listings to the site, meaning that the vast majority of content is provided by companies rather than private individuals. → Read More
Been holding out of buying a blu-ray because you were waiting for them to get cheap? Wait no longer, penny pincher! Wal-mart is selling off a bare bones unit for $78 plus shipping. → Read More
Either TomTom’s startin’ to feel the burn of the incredibly competitive (and arguably crumbling) navigation app market, or they’re just feeling generous for the holidays. Either way, now’s the time to buy if you were considering snatching up any of TomTom’s U.S. apps. → Read More
We have a problem, Internet. You know how on New Year’s Eve everyone walks around with Happy 2009 (or whatever) glasses? That bunk ain’t gonna fly this year. Try wearing a 2010 pair of glasses: where are you going to look through, the 1? This is a serious situation that demands the attention of our best engineers. → Read More
What are people Googling in Russia? A group called Ovoscham replaced bus shelter ads on the streets of Moscow with their own subverted Google ads which read more like political commentary. The ads takes the familiar Google ads showing what a celebrity is Googling, and turns it on its head. Umapper founder Adrei Taraschuk provides us with the following translation for search queries in one of the ads, presumably showing what a typical Russian citizen might be looking for:
(Subversive ad and video after the jump) → Read More
Each time we write about Dazzboard, a browser-based syncing solution for getting photos, videos, and music onto your mobile handset, it’s pretty much a given that someone will comment that it doesn’t support their handset of choice yet. Everyone’s a critic, right? While it still doesn’t support the much clamored-for iPhone or iPod Touch (nor does it seem likely that it will anytime soon, due to software restrictions – thanks Apple!), they’ve just added support for a different hot-ticket item: Android phones. → Read More
One of the keys to cloud-based storage solutions is the ability to access your data from your mobile device. Today, Nomadesk is announcing a partnership to help establish themselves in that realm.
The company has a deal with Bell Canada to give its SOHO and SMB customers easy access to Nomadesk’s cloud-storage offering. With it, Bell Canada customers will be able to share, synchronize, encrypt, backup, and store data on Nomadesk all for $15-a-month per file server. For this fee, an unlimited number of team members will be able to access the data through any computer, and more importantly for this deal, their phones. → Read More
[UK] The Guardian has launched its long awaited iPhone app, which is designed to give a better reading experience on Apple’s iconic device than the UK newspaper’s standard desktop or mobile offering.
The app isn’t isn’t free, however, unlike most of The Guardian’s content, costing a one-off payment of £2.39 for which readers will be spared ads (for now) and get a raft of smartphone-optimized features. These include basic customisation of the newspaper’s ‘front page’, support for audio, and perhaps most notable, off-line browsing – although early App Store reviews suggest that the app is still a little buggy and lacks some obvious social media functionality. → Read More
For any small business, there’s no question that efficient internal communication is key. That’s doubly true in today’s world, where many companies have team members scattered around the world. There are communication platforms out there that look to tackle this, but many of them are either time consuming to setup or aren’t really designed for your ‘everyman’ small business or organization. Enter HipChat, a startup that wants to be the communication platform that any business or organization can get up and running in a matter of minutes. The service launches today in private beta, and the first 100 people to enter “TECHCRUNCH” as their invite code will be able to start their own company networks (you only need one code to invite your entire company).
HipChat offers an Adobe AIR client (compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux) that lets you chat with your entire team at once, or hold more private discussions with select team members. It offers support for quick attachment sharing, notifications when you receive a message, and a searchable web archive for past messages. → Read More
We’ve all seen MythBusters when there’s nothing else on TV, right? Right. Well here’s a video showing a Modern Warfare 2 several game myths either busted or confirmed. Well, mainly confirmed. Sorta reminds me of that Halo Warthog video. → Read More
Hello and welcome to CrunchGear’s Bag Week, a week all about bags. Why bags, you ask? Because bags, whether we like it or not, are our first line of defense against the vagaries of a harsh world. We can protect our laptops in our curled and quivering arms or we can slide them into a nice Sumo or Booq and find ourselves secure in the knowledge that everything, for a little while, is going to be OK. → Read More
Come see James Cameron’s Avatar in 3D with us on opening day this Friday in San Francisco. As with past screenings (Iron Man, Star Trek, Batman and others) we’re footing the bill. We just love to see all our happy readers in person every once in a while.
The screening is at 4:00 pm (seating opens at 3:15) at the AMC Metreon 16 (4th and Market) in San Francisco this Friday December 18. Tickets are available here at Eventbrite (we’re releasing a portion now, and more later). We’re asking for a charitable donation of $5 per ticket, and 100% of the proceeds will be given to the UCSF Foundation or Malaria No More (your choice).
Like we said, we’ve got the tickets covered. If you’d like to sponsor the event by buying attendees popcorn and/or a soft drink, email us at sponsors@techcrunch.com. → Read More
Two weeks ago, SimpleGeo raised a $1.5 million seed round from just about every big angel investor in Silicon Valley. Not surprisingly, they’re already putting that money to good use.
Before the funding, SimpleGeo was a team of four including co-founders Matt Galligan and Joe Stump. As of today, they’re now 7, with the arrival of two new hires: Zooko (yes, that’s what he’s known as), a peer-to-peer hacker best known for his work on Mojo Nation, a precursor to BitTorrent. And Mike Malone, an engineer at Six Apart who was also instrumental in the building of Pownce, the since-deadpooled social messaging service. → Read More
The beauty of essentially quitting social networking, as I have, is that I don’t have to worry about all of the associated nonsense. “Facebook’s new privacy settings cause uproar.” Really? Not if you quit the site it doesn’t. “Malicious programs causing social network malaise.” Again, not an issue if you’re not all-consumed with tweeting every 10 seconds about what you’re eating for breakfast. → Read More
For me, the best part of Patch 3.3 in World of Warcraft is the new dungeon finder. I’ve used it a bunch in the past couple of days, and can say this: PUGing is now fun (though it’ll change the way we look at guilds). → Read More
Moments after we heard reports of Facebook’s new URL shortener, Google launched its own service, aptly called goo.gl.
At the moment, its only being used for Google Toolbar and Feedburner. Google just announced the new service as a sharing feature of Toolbar that will let you share a web page directly from Toolbar. The shortener is not a stand alone service and is not available for “broader consumer use.” That is, at least for now. Google assures that its shortener will be stable and secure to help protect users from clicking on malicious sites. And unsurprisingly, Google promises a speedy service for links. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
