January 27th, 2010

Jason Calacanis (absolutely does not) spoil Apple tablet event, drops no major details (update: not)


Jason Calacanis isn’t a a nobody. He’s a serial web entrepreneur, founder of Weblogs, Inc., co-founder of TechCrunch50 and CEO of search engine Mahalo (amongst others). And just a few minutes ago, via his Twitter account, he (possibly) dropped some major hints on the Apple tablet that’s going to be presented tomorrow. Calacanis claims he has been given a tablet by Apple ten days ago, adding “For background: apple asked me to do press tomorrow on cnbc, cnn, etc.”.

If he isn’t pulling a major PR stunt (I think he isn’t), Calacanis is stoked. Here’s the gist of what he says about the device. I know many of you are sick of hearing about it, and this may turn out to be totally false info tomorrow – but what he said seemed just too interesting.

Editor’s Note – Serkan has been beaten. There is nothing to see here. → Read More

January 27th, 2010

Daily Crunch: Oceanographer's Choice Edition

Tea Sub. For your daily cuteness infusion needs
Battery-powered heat socks
McGraw-Hill CEO Confirms Apple Tablet Is Coming Tomorrow → Read More

January 27th, 2010

Twas the night before the Creation event, and all through the internet..

Fair warning, this is probably a fake – we all know that people love to prank the night before an Apple event. Some suspected pictures of the iPad have shown up on the net, but it looks fishy to me. → Read More

January 27th, 2010

Baidu And Japan's Rakuten To Invest $50 Million In Giant Online Shopping Mall

Chinese search leader Baidu and Rakuten, Japan’s largest e-commerce player, have announced an agreement to jointly invest US$50 million over three years in a joint venture to build a huge online ‘B2B2C’ shopping mall for Chinese Internet users.

Under the terms of the agreement, Rakuten will become majority shareholder of the new, yet to be named joint venture (51%) with Baidu owning the remaining 49%. → Read More

January 27th, 2010

Key Video From The World Economic Forum's Social Networking Powerhouse Panel

Each year the World Economic Forum at Davos holds number of technology focused sessions. Last year I moderated a high profile discussion about the next digital experience. This year, Loic Le Meur is hosting a discussion on the growth of social networks.

Participants include Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn, Greylock), Owen Van Natta (MySpace), Gina Bianchini (Ning), Evan Williams (Twitter) and George Colony (Forrester Research) and Don Tapscott (nGenera). Randi Zuckerberg, Jeff Jarvis, Russian super-investor Yuri Milner and others also dropped by to participate.

The room is packed, standing room only, and bursting at the seams. These guys are popular in Silicon Valley. Bring them to Davos, Switzerland and everyone wants to hear what they have to say. → Read More

January 26th, 2010

GM keeping it all in the country with electric engine manufacturing


Good for GM. I don’t just congratulate them on a strict “buy American” level, but the decision to break off from the pack and both design and build the next generation of electric engines is a good one. Of course, there’s the question of whether they’ll be using Panasonic batteries and other Japanese parts. They’re still pretty much cornered in some of those areas. But hey, we’ll take what we can get. → Read More

January 26th, 2010

SteelSeries asks: You know the goody bag given out at the end of fancy events?

Jimin-with-the-big-FLAC-collection and I met with one of the SteelSeries guys today. It’s funny: you think you understand where a company’s coming from, but then you sit down and actually talk to them and it’s like, “Wow, OK, you guys are pretty cool.” So to the people who will walk out of Sunday’s Grammy Awards with one of those fancy gift bags you always hear about, I can say this: you’ll probably enjoy the SteelSeries headphones you find in there. → Read More

January 26th, 2010

Olympus announcing something soon

Olympus is announcing.. something.. soon. We think. It kinda looks like a camera. But it might be fingernail clippers, or perhaps prosthetic hands. We’re not sure. → Read More

January 26th, 2010

Review: Iomega ix4-200d

Short version: Iomega has been making storage devices for years, and it shows. I’m a fan of NAS hardware and technology, and Iomega has created a product that not only stores data, but has enough value add to make it stand out from the dozens of other black boxes for storing your data. → Read More

January 26th, 2010

Doonesbury takes on the Apple Tablet announcement

So very true. [Slate via Daring Fireball] → Read More

January 26th, 2010

TeleNav creating GPS blog reading system

To me, geo-tagging in photography hasn’t really held much interest. Sure, it’s helpful when you see someones work that you admire, but generally I’ve always felt that it was kind of silly. TeleNav is looking to change that, through the use of a device that will show you images to places in your area that have been tagged. → Read More

January 26th, 2010

Break free from the corporate Snuggie stranglehold by sewing your own

Are we still expected, in the year 2010, to pay $20 plus $8 shipping for a Snuggie? And another $8 shipping for a second bonus Snuggie? NO! Show the fat cats at the Snuggie conglomerate that you’re onto their little ruse. Take a big piece of fabric – any fabric you want! — cut some arm holes, and sew some arms onto the arm holes. → Read More

January 26th, 2010

The Tablet Could Spur A Media Revolution, But It Will Be Out Of Apple's Hands

Here we are, on the eve of the Tablet’s unveiling, with only hours to go before we find out just how ambitious Apple’s latest creation is. Countless articles have been written about how the forthcoming Tablet could be the savior of old media. Supposedly, people will finally start paying for this content because it will be readily available at their fingertips. But the promise of the tablet does not lie in immediate access to content; the Internet can already do that, as can the Kindle, to some extent. The true revolution lies in the new medium the tablet will give us. Four months ago Dan Lyons, writing as Fake Steve Jobs, totally nailed it:

New technology spawns new ways to tell stories. That’s the really exciting thing here. Not the tablet itself, but what it means for news, for entertainment, for literature. Gasp. Geddit? Is the f***ing light going off yet? This is what Anton Chekhov meant when he said that the medium is the message. This is why the Tablet is so profound.

→ Read More

January 26th, 2010

Dog barks, gets sprayed by own collar

I’m getting this for my dog. He’s soooo dramatic. He hears people screaming, he barks. He hears a gunshot, he barks. He hears explosions, well you get the idea. → Read More

January 26th, 2010

The latest movie franchise to be rebooted? Mortal Kombat. Yikes.

Does the world need another Mortal Kombat movie? No, probably not, but that won’t stop Hollywood from attempting to exploit a license that was last hot in 1994. Word on the street is that Warner Bros. wants to, yes, “reboot” the series. (Note: You cannot reboot a dead computer, so I don’t know if it’s possible to reboot a dead movie franchise.) To that end it has hired Oren Uziel to write the script. You’ve probably never heard of Uziel, but he wrote Shimmer Lake. You’ve probably never heard of that, either. → Read More

January 26th, 2010

The BigTrak poised to turn left-right-forward-left-back into your heart

Remember the BigTrak? It was a six-wheeled tow with built-in memory that allowed you to program various moves – forward, back, left – and then play them back. If you’re thinking to yourself “What fun is that?” then you were probably born after 1980 and expect all your toys to have native intelligence. Back when us kids were kids, this kind of stuff stuff was high tech considering most of us had little more than rocks and sticks during the Carter administration. → Read More

January 26th, 2010

MagicJack giveaway update: they went to a good home

Back when we were at CES, we were given a case of MagicJacks to give away to contest winners and the like. After scratching our heads about about what to do with them, we threw the question out to you, our valued readers. Based on your suggestions, we found a new home for the entire case of the things. → Read More

January 26th, 2010

Tea Sub. For your daily cuteness infusion needs

I’m not a tea drinker yet, but I’ve already started thinking about what method I’ll be using to create the stuff. I mean, you can go loose leaf, or glass infuser, or tea ball, regular bags, and probably a number of other ways as well. Look at this thing, for example. I guess it falls under the infuser category, or a cross with tea ball, but let’s just call it what it is: a shameless attempt to get young children hooked on tea.

Well, that’s probably putting it a bit strongly. It’s also for Beatles fans. → Read More

January 26th, 2010

The Top Ten Groundbreaking Slates

Tomorrow is a big day. Apple will be revealing a brand new product to the masses. While we don’t know what it will be called, we’re quite certain Jobs will be unveiling the much-anticipated Apple Tablet. While the Apple Tablet may very well revolutionize the tablet industry–as their previous products have done many times before–it wouldn’t be where it is without those that came before it. Below you will find a list of what we believe to be the top slates. → Read More

January 26th, 2010

Battery-powered heat socks

Battery-powered socks that help keep your feet warm? What may sound a bit like overkill at first does make sense when you think of motorcycle riders or people having to work outdoors for long hours during winter. Made by Tokyo-based Bionics Japan, the so-called Heat Sock EX [JP] heats your entire foot by incorporating conductive carbon fibers. → Read More

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Crunchbase

Pinwheel — Received $7.5M in Series A funding from Redpoint Ventures
2.17.2012
HCP & Company — Company added to CrunchBase
2.25.2012
Redpoint Ventures — Invested in Pinwheel.
2.17.2012
2.23.2012
AVG Technologies — Went public with stock symbol NYSE:AVG.
2.2.2012
2.23.2012
Lightwire — Acquired by Cisco for $271M.
2.24.2012
AppAssure Software — Acquired by Dell.
2.24.2012
Recurve — Acquired by Tendril.
2.24.2012
Chomp — Acquired by Apple.
2.23.2012
Pinwheel — Received $7.5M in Series A funding from Redpoint Ventures
2.17.2012
Wireless Toyz — Received $487k in Grant funding
2.24.2012
Energid Technologies — Received $500k in Grant funding from National Science Foundation
2.24.2012
Octopusapp — Received Seed funding from Boris Wertz and Point Nine Capital
2.23.2012
2.23.2012
Redpoint Ventures — Invested in Pinwheel.
2.17.2012
Point Nine Capital — Invested in Octopusapp.
2.23.2012
Boris Wertz — Invested in Octopusapp.
2.23.2012
2.23.2012
AVG Technologies — Went public with stock symbol NYSE:AVG.
2.2.2012
Brightcove — Went public with stock symbol NASDAQ:BCOV.
2.17.2012
Jive Software — Went public with stock symbol NASDAQ:JIVE.
2.3.2012
HCP & Company — Company added to CrunchBase
2.25.2012
Career Training Academy — Company added to CrunchBase
2.25.2012
Wireless Toyz — Company added to CrunchBase
2.25.2012
Lightwire — Company added to CrunchBase
2.25.2012
Energid Technologies — Company added to CrunchBase
2.25.2012
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