TechCrunch Europe is plotting the next series of events we’re planning this year.
But we’re going to need your help.
We’re looking for speakers and startups to appear at our events, and we’re especially interested in new startups planning to launch (read on about why).
Meanwhile we’ve set up ticketing sites for you now so you can actually go and get early bird ticket prices right now. See below for details.
So far this year we’ve partnered with or created events in Istanbul and Barcelona for tech startups. The next series of events require YOU to get as involved as you can.
These take us to the Summer, after which we’ll be hitting other cities.
In all cases, here’s what we want: → Read More
In case you needed another indicator Hollywood has run out of ideas, here is a new one for you: Atari is about to sell the movie rights to Missile Command, a shooting game that hit arcades back in 1980, to 20th Century Fox and another movie production company.
Getting the license doesn’t necessarily mean we ever get to see a Missile Command movie on the big screen, but a first step has been made. And in fact, Atari already managed to auction off the rights for Asteroids, another classic action game, to Universal Pictures last summer. Missile Command is supposed to be turned into a 3D movie. → Read More
What do a trucker, an Israeli entrepreneur, Al Gore and Richard Branson all have in common? Proof that the real goldmines are old, neglected industries.
The name of that proof is GreenRoad. While so many entrepreneurs bang their heads against a Web and social media advertising brick wall, GreenRoad has applied common technology to an industry technology has largely passed by and—voila—they’ve got a business that’s growing and saving lives, money and the environment.
Driving is the third most deadly profession after deep sea fishing and working in a coal mine. Not only does driving more safely save lives but research shows it can also save 10% on annual fuel costs, and alleviate a good chunk of the $230 billion professional fleets spend on crashes each year. Enter GreenRoad: a system that helps professional drivers drive more safely and as a result save their company a lot of money. → Read More
Over the past several years, there’s been no shortage of talk about alternative energy, and its potential to change the world. The problem is that most of it is just that — talk. But tonight, a report that aired on 60 Minutes showed one alternative that is not only real, it’s already being tested by companies such as Google and eBay. You simply have to watch this.
Bloom Energy are producing tiny fuel cell boxes they call “Bloom Boxes.” Two of these can apparently power a U.S. home (and only one for homes in countries that use less power). So how small are they? Look at the picture above, each device isn’t much bigger than a standard brick. Of course, they need to be surrounded by a larger unit that takes in an energy source (such as natural gas). But still, these units look to be about the size of a refrigerator and can easily fit outside of a home, providing it with clean, cheap energy. → Read More
Innovationman has a gas-powered skateboard to sell you! He wants you to buy it! He has a family who are also interested in your trade! This thing is going for under $1000 but if you win, you have to offer a deposit of $1000! Don’t miss out! What is this thing? Let Innovationman tell you! → Read More
It’s the supreme madness of the PMA 2010 season, and although we can’t make it there personally this year, that won’t stop all them camera companies from releasing stuff. You saw the sweet new Samsungs that dropped yesterday, but here are a few more interesting developments from the show. → Read More
MySpace’s new slogan, and the theme of their new product strategy, will be “Discover and be Discovered,” we’ve confirmed from multiple sources. This will be their differentiating factor from Facebook, execs told employees at an all hands meeting last Thursday.
The meeting was called in the wake of the firing of CEO Owen Van Natta and the related promotions of Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn to co-presidents. The meeting, which was held in the courtyard of MySpace’s Los Angeles headquarters to accomodate 600 or employees, was also broadcast to other offices around the world. → Read More
Maybe you own a Kindle and find that its relatively small size might be on the big side when traveling or on the go, but you own a BlackBerry and not an iPhone. And maybe you never cared to own an iPhone until the Kindle app became available on it. Well, Amazon finally has some good news for you. → Read More
MySpace has launched an activity and content stream, which they are calling simply the “Stream.” Previously they showed a feed of status updates from friends, but the new feature shows a lot more content, including things like music your friends are listening to on MySpace Music, video they’re watching, links they are adding, etc.
The company hasn’t formally announced the product, which sort of makes sense since they’re still playing catch up with similar features on Facebook. But it’s an important beachhead in their go-forward strategy, we’ve learned. More on that in our next post. → Read More
RightSide Capital Management is about to shatter the funding landscape. Led by David Lambert, Kevin Dick and John Lee, RightSide Capital believes that seed-stage capital needs a complete overhaul. RightSide will make 100-200 investments per year, and literally manufacture companies in a way that no firm has ever done. The fund, announced at TheFunded.com’s Future of Funding event last Thursday, will debut in the second half of 2010 and may give the angel funding market a much-deserved shakeup. Partner Kevin Dick went on stage during a panel on alternative funding methods and laid out what he believes to be the future of funding. Quantity, not quality, is king in the seed stage. Entrepreneurs looking for funding won’t have to go the traditional route of begging for a meeting and then having a second meeting and then waiting 3 months for traction until finally closing a deal. Instead, they will fill out an application – similar to applying to College – and receive a response in 2 weeks. → Read More
Speaking as someone who lives in a glass house, the confession by InfoWorld that one of their writers was using a false identity and sometimes misrepresenting himself is great, along with the deletion of all his content. But it’s less great when it comes after you’ve been caught.
This is exactly the type of situation we wanted to avoid, and it’s the reason why we published the facts about the Daniel Brusilovsky situation as soon as we fully understood them. We didn’t publish the name of the writer because of his age until he admitted to the situation himself. And we didn’t publish the names of the companies involved because, frankly, they were the victims of the whole thing. But everything else was disclosed as soon as we were sure of the facts.
A lot of people criticized us for “throwing Daniel under the bus” and for otherwise handling the situation poorly. But anyone who runs a news organization knows that the truth tends to come out eventually. It’s best to just air everything out in the open right from the start. And hopefully our readers will know that there’s no funny stuff going on at TechCrunch. If there was, we’d be the first to write about it.
In this case InfoWorld may not have known what was happening until they read about it on a competing website. In fact, they probably would have terminated him as soon as they discovered what he was up to. But it’s not clear that they would have publicly acknowledged it afterwards. And since the story broke before they were able to tell their readers what happened themselves, we’ll never know. → Read More
The Local Wine Events website may be ugly as sin, but if you’re a wine lover, you’ve probably already got it bookmarked. This is a small ten year old business being run out of Pennsylvania with about a million page views a month.
It’s a pretty straightforward business. You go there to find local wine events. People who are having wine events pay to list them there, and there is lots of other advertising as well. 1,500 new events are posted each week.
Despite their size the site has gotten some big attention. Gary Vaynerchuck had owner Eric Orange on his show last year, and Apple has made their mobile site a staff pick and a Featured Web App for the iPhone.
And this small business is profitable. Last year the company, with four employees, had $250,000 in gross profits. → Read More
Is it even worth getting upset over this Ubisoft nonsense? By now you’ve certainly heard about the company’s plans to implement a new form of DRM for its PC releases—I’ve only written about it 800 times in the past month! The DRM is bat-shit crazy, sure, but it’s the sentiment behind it that has me concerned this Sunday morning. → Read More
Venture Capitalist Mike Maples gave a talk last week at the Future Of Funding event in Silicon Valley put on by Adeo Ressi.
The talk is highly entertaining and thought provoking. He argues against the notion that startups that want to have a huge exit need to raise big money, noting that Microsoft raised just $1 million and eBay just $5 million, in venture capital.
He says small startups can be hugely disruptive, and have proportionally huge exits. he calls these companies Thunder Lizards. He’s talking about Godzilla, which eats his competitors and disrupts like crazy. These are the market leaders, he says. Second place is boring. → Read More
When I was at school, I almost never took sick days. This wasn’t because I enjoyed going to school – I really, really didn’t. Rather it was because I knew exactly what would happen if I dared to skip a day of classes.
A duck would somehow get into the school dining hall.
Or an explosion would destroy the chemistry lab.
Or two of my teachers would be caught having sex.
Or someone would die.
The specific incident isn’t important; the point is that I could guarantee that the one day I decided to skip school would be the day that something extraordinary would happen. Something that all of my friends would be talking about for the rest of the year while I was left to sit and sulk at having missed out. → Read More
Women, Hispanics and blacks have always been underrepresented in the ranks of the Valley’s tech companies. A new analysis by the Mercury News shows that from 2000 to 2008, the proportion of women tech workers in Silicon Valley dropped from 25.3% to 23.8%, and that the national numbers dropped from 30% to 27.4%. In 2008, blacks and Hispanics constituted only 1.5% and 4.7% respectively of the Valley’s tech population — well below national tech-population averages of 7.1% and 5.3%. It seems that the problem I highlighted in my last post on the dearth of tech women is actually getting worse, particularly in Silicon Valley. And it’s not just the women who are being left out, but also important minority groups.
Is the Valley deliberately keeping these groups out? I don’t think so. Silicon Valley is, without doubt, a meritocracy. In this land, only the fittest survive. That is exactly the way it should be. For the Valley’s innovation system to achieve peak performance, new technologies need to constantly obsolete the old, and the world’s best techies need to keep making the Valley’s top guns compete for their jobs. There is no room for government mandated affirmative action, and our tech companies shouldn’t have to apologize for hiring the people they need. But at the same time, without realizing it, the Valley may be excluding a significant part of the American population that could be making it even more competitive. False stereotypes may be getting in the way of greater innovation and prosperity. → Read More
By now, you’ve probably heard of Chatroulette, the website where one can anonymously have video chat conversations with random strangers from around the world. Needless to say, this freaks out just about everyone who has tried the service so far, which was started by 17-year-old high school student Andrey Ternovskiy from Moscow.
Check out SFWeekly editor Alexia Tsotis’ experience here on TechCrunch, for instance.
It was of course just a matter of time before sites started collecting screencaps from all those mostly NSFW funny, weird, disturbing, [insert appropriate adjective] video chat sessions and turned it into a phenomenon of its own right. One of them, and perhaps the best one around, is Tumblr blog CHATROULOLZ. → Read More
All the hella-haters can spin on it. I want “hella” as an SI-recognized prefix along with “mega” and “kilo.” And that’s why I’m about to do something I rarely ever do: join a Facebook group. Point your little browser toward The Official Petition to Establish ‘Hella-’ as the SI Prefix for 10^27 if you want your storage space in 50 years to be measured in hellabytes and the universe’s weight in hellagrams. → Read More
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