The iPad isn’t the only upcoming slate computer. Archos has the 7 Home Tablet coming real soon as well. The 7-inch Android tablet doesn’t have an official release date as of yet, but a German retailer states that it will be shipping in a week. Why the iPad launches on April 3rd? Coincidence? We think not. → Read More
In the 2000 elections, incumbent Republican Senator John Ashcroft was defeated by Governor Mel Carnahan in the race for one of Missouri’s U.S. Senate seats. The only problem? Carnahan was dead.
I’m reminded of this while looking over the traffic logs for TechCrunch, because it appears that someone else is losing to a dead rival: Google Buzz. According to our data, in the past month, Google Buzz has been sending less traffic to TechCrunch than FriendFeed — the service which is essentially the same as Buzz, only better, and ever since the acquisition by Facebook has been a ghost town. → Read More
Popular podcasting site BlogTalkRadio has raised $1.9 million in Series B funding from the Kraft Group, Howard Lindzon, Roger Ehrenberg and founder Alan Levy. BlogTalkRadio, which was founded in 2006 and allows anyone can set up a podcast or “radio talkshow” over the web using phone calls, had previously raised $4.6 million in Series A funding in 2008 led by the Kraft Group.
This additional funding will be used for product development and to help BlogTalkRadio expand its solutions to other verticals. few key verticals.BlogTalkRadio’s unique platform allows individuals and companies to use a phone to conduct a live broadcast via the web. Participants dial a phone number, enter the broadcast and then the entire conversation is streamed on air live through the BlogTalkRadio Web site. The site also archives all radio shows as podcasts, so they can easily be uploaded to iTunes and then shared on other blogs, sites etc. → Read More
If only this were true, friends. If only this were true. Click through for the original, amazing, and real Adobe video. → Read More
Warner Bros. UK is offering an internship to “IT literate” students that requires them to spy on fellow file-sharers. The intern will have to maintain accounts on private BitTorrent sites, as well as procure new accounts, in order to supply Warner Bros. UK with information on how that whole “world” works. Not a bad idea from Warner’s perspective. → Read More
A new study from the University of Utah suggests that a very small percentage of people are able to drive safely while using a cellphone. The actual percentage, 2.5 percent of the population, isn’t high enough to affect policy, but it’s interesting nonetheless. Well, kinda. → Read More
[UK] London-based Frog Capital has announced that Stephen Lowery has joined as a Partner. Frog invests in growth-stage companies across the cleantech and IT & digital media sectors.
Lowery leaves 3i where he was Director of Venture and then Growth Capital and led or was “closely involved in” investments in European IT and cleantech companies, such as Icera, Nujira and Light Blue Optics, and in profitable exits, including Respond, Insensys and UbiNetics. He also represented 3i on the board of The Cambridge Network.
Prior to 3i he was with PA Consulting in its Global Technology Group. → Read More
Selling updated maps has always been a clever revenue source for top-tier GPS makers. But TomTom is breaking the mold and just starting offering free map and traffic updates across most of its product line. XL and XXL units starting at $199 are now available with the feature. Hopefully TomTom will continue marching the feature down-market, outing new, lower-priced models with the same lifetime trend. Click through for the presser. → Read More
Things are not going great at Elevation Partners. Its initial $1.8 billion fund – that was met with great fanfare when it was raised by rockstar investor Roger McNamee, rockstar gaming executive John Riccitiello and actual rockstar Bono – is about 70% invested and the two biggest deals are duds. Elevation invested some $300 million in Forbes and a whopping $460 million in Palm—a company with a stock hovering around $4 per share, down some 75% since October.
Yet, things aren’t quite as bad as they look from the outside for two reasons. First: Elevation has hedged its risky strategy of putting so much money behind a few bets by concocting a complex system of puts and convertible issues that limit the downside of its worse deals. For instance, even with Palm at the lowly $4 a share, Elevation roughly breaks even on the fund, which not every venture fund raised in 2005 can say for itself.
The second reason? The fund secretly bought up some $90 million of Facebook shares on the secondary market late last year. One person with knowledge of the transaction told us: This deal – which anyone with $90 million could have struck – could be the only thing that tips the fund in the black, a crucial bragging point as Elevation gets ready to think about raising its second fund in a brutal fundraising environment. → Read More
The good word of the rumor mill said we’d be hearing about Push-to-talk on the Verizon BlackBerry Tour soon, and sure enough: ol’ VeeZeeDub has just made it official. → Read More
I guarantee that the outside water spigot at my mom’s house has weathered rings left over from water balloons. There just isn’t a fool-proof way to fill up the balloons on a naked spigot. Sure, there are those little nozzles that thread on, but those don’t work well either. But the AquadAntics Water Bomb Factory is just what the name implies: a venerable water balloon factory. You have to see this thing in action. It’s set to revolutionize summer time. Click through for the video. → Read More
There’s less than a week to go until the iPad’s April 3 launch date, but up until now footage of people actually using the device has been relatively scant — there’s the Steve Jobs keynote address, a few Flip-cam recordings from the twenty minutes reporters had after the keynote, and a whirlwind commercial. Today, we’re getting much, much more: Apple has just posted a series of eleven Guided Tours that walk you through many of the device’s core features, including Safari, Mail, iBooks, and the iWork suite.
If you want to get a feel for what can be done with an advanced app on the iPad, check out the iWork apps. The Keynote video, in particular, is impressive — it shows how you can use multi-touch to rearrange slides, place and resize images, and create animated effects using a feature called ‘Magic Move’. It looks very slick, though we’ll have to try it for ourselves before we can determine if it’s as efficient as its desktop counterpart. → Read More
[UK] It’s not the norm for a startup based in London’s Silicon Roundabout to be in the hardware business, let alone the highly competitive world of consumer electronics. But that’s precisely the position that 3view find themselves in.
The company’s Internet connected set-top box, which marriages the worlds of over-the-air broadcast television and Internet TV (IPTV), is poised to compete directly with TVs and set-tops from the likes of Sony, Pioneer, Sharp, Humax, Pace and others, and to some degree, the online video and media playback capabilities of Microsoft’s XBox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3 game consoles. → Read More
[Denmark] A thriving startup scene is in part characterised by its events and meetups where creativity, knowledge and contacts can be exchanged. And that precondition is very much in evidence in Copenhagen this spring.
Here’s a breakdown of upcoming events: → Read More
[Germany] Billed as an iPad competitor, the WePad is not vaporware, but is in fact, The Chosen One. At least, that’s the view of some, who are hailing the WePad as the saviour of the German print publishing industry.
While Apple is still racing to the wire to secure enough media content partnerships for the iPad before its launch this week, the WePad has already bagged Europe’s biggest publisher, Gruner & Jahr.
Bernd Buchholz, CEO of Gruner + Jahr, presented the first German-born slate PC at this week’s annual press conference for his company. Unfortunately, there is only a very dark photo of this event on on Facebook, but you can find new professional shots on sites like Areamobile (below). → Read More
DirecTV will be among the first television providers to offer ESPN 3D. The channel launches this June, and DirecTV will place it alongside two other 3D channels, a 24/7 pay-per-view channel and a movies on-demand channel. → Read More
Here’s what we know: Come March 31st, all Sprint retail employees will be huddled around their computers, tuning into a meeting we’ve heard called “top secret”, “mandatory”, and “company-wide”. → Read More
NowhereElse found this delightful video of someone unpacking a iPhone “4G” screen, presumably sent to them from the same folks who sent something to iResq.
The screen basically looks like the standard iPhone 3G screen but a bit longer and thinner. This could either be a prototype, a mistake, or a test screen made by a Chinese company for purposes unknown. However, the music accompanying the video will make your morning, provided you have a glowsticks handy. → Read More
Real or fake? It’s a question often asked in the San Fernando Valley, and it’s been thrown around quite a bit lately with respect to videos purporting to show off the WP7S interface. Here is yet another such video, showing the interface on an HTC Touch Diamond. If, indeed, this is fake, may I ask why? Why put the effort into making such a video? Use your video-making talents for good, not evil. → Read More
Garmin makes great GPS watches. I’ve been wearing them for years. They’ve added to that proud pantheon the 110, a SiRFstar IV watch with optional heartrate monitor designed to tell you a few simple pieces of data including speed and distance. The 110 is described as the “easiest” Garmin device out there and if you’ve ever messed with other watches, you’ll know that, while powerful, Garmin’s UI was a little rough. Inspired by the countless runners who have the same request at race expos and retail outlets – “Show me the Garmin watch that has GPS and is easiest to use” – Forerunner 110 is the ideal entry-level device for easily tracking progress and goals in exercise and training. In addition to displaying time and distance, Forerunner 110 shows pace in one of two ways, averaged out either over the current lap/mile (if auto-lap is enabled) or over the duration of the run. Runners wearing a Garmin heart rate monitor (included in some bundles or available separately) can monitor how hard they’re working while they exercise as Forerunner 110 displays current heart rate data and features heart rate-based calorie computation. Between workouts, the simplified menu system helps users review run data, change auto-lap, set an alarm or edit the user profile. The new chip adds better satellite reception and can last eight days on one charge in GPS standby or eight full hours of training. It comes in “fashionable” pink and red. Click through for the full press release. → Read More
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