MySpace’s former GM International Travis Katz left the company shortly after the big executive shakeout in the Spring of 2009.
He spent a few months in Hawaii recharging, and then moved his family to Silicon Valley. Since January he’s been working on a new startup, he says, and he’s teamed up with Ori Zaltzman, the former Chief Architect of Yahoo Boss.
That’s enough of a team to make things really interesting. Particuarly Zaltzman’s deep infrastructure background. → Read More
Battlefield 1943 is now the quickest game in Xbox LIVE’s history to reach 1 million games downloaded. But PC gamers don’t care. We want to play Battlefield 1943, too. It is after all a remake of classic PC game. → Read More
This rather nifty electronics sculpture was created by Artist Steve D’Angelo, as a homage to the classic arcade. This is what I think all synthesizers should look like. [Make: Online] → Read More
Back in fall 2008, we covered the launch of Twilio, a service that gives web developers an API to easily build web apps with telephony features, like audio playback, voice recording, and more recently, SMS messages. Now a new challenger is approaching: a service called Teleku offers many of the same features, but it’s taking a different approach that its founder says makes it more flexible. It’s cash-flow positive, and it was built by one man over the course of two months. Teleku is in a private beta, but you can grab an account by going here and using the code ‘techcrunch’ to sign up.
So how does Teleku differ from Twilio? It’s a matter of flexibility, according to founder (and sole employee) Chris Matthieu. He says that when you use Twilio, it’s an all-in-one deal: you write your code in Twilo’s easy-to-use syntax called TwiML, which is then sent to Twilio’s telephony services in the cloud that are hosted on AWS. → Read More
As a professional social network, LinkedIn hasn’t ignored the mobile interests of its 60 million plus users. The company has consistently updated its sleek iPhone app, recently launching a new version. Last fall, LinkedIn announced that a powerful BlackBerry app would be on its way. And the app is an important connector to the enterprise crowd, which generally tend to use BlackBerry devices. Tonight, the new app officially launches. You can download the app here.
The LinkedIn app for BlackBerry is as feature-rich as its iPhone cousin. You can visualize your feed of network updates, search across direct connections and the entire LinkedIn network, access any of your connections to get get profile information, and message contacts. You can also access your LinkedIn inbox, send and accept invitations and see all of your messages. And the app will suggest new connections to you. → Read More
[France] Bordeaux-based AllGoob, a French search engine publisher, has just announced that it has raised a €1 million first round with Newfund for its European development and new search engine, wiPikit.
AllGoob was founded by Thomas Allaire and François Goube after roughly 2 years of development in 2007.
The company is behind job search engine success JobiJoba - which was launched the same year and is now one of the largest job databases in France, uniting over 300,000 job offers with 700,000 candidates on the site per month. The site also launched in Belgium in 2008 along with the UK, the US and Spain in 2009. → Read More
Buying a flash unit can be expensive, but here’s a cheapskate alternative that will do the job, at least for a while. Plus, you’re recycling a disposable camera into something reusable, and saving all those bits from the landfill. Besides, once you use all of the flash out of one disposable camera, you can always build another one to replace it, and recycle the first one. → Read More
About a month ago, I noticed that several of the major camera companies were putting out some rugged, waterproof, and generally durable cameras, something I’ve always said is a very good thing. Everybody carries around their camera as if it were a three-hundred-dollar egg — why aren’t they sturdier? So now we’ve the fully ruggedized cameras from Casio, Fujifilm, and Olympus, along with the new Playsport pocket camcorder from Kodak. I’ll be subjecting to the usual image quality tests, and also checking their purported rough-and-tumble character. → Read More
The new Facebook for webOS application that launched earlier this month brought a massive overhaul and a laundry list of needed improvements, but it lacked one thing that users have been clamoring for since the beginning: notifications. webOS’ notifications system is one of its greatest strengths, allowing alerts to pop up on screen in a way that is unobtrusive while still allowing the user to quickly jump to the relevant screen if desired. An alert-heavy application like Facebook going sans-notifications definitely dampened the experience a bit. Well, Facebook notifications are coming. In fact, they’re already here, if you’re willing to dabble with Beta software. → Read More
3D is everywhere! There’s no use trying to stop it anymore! Soon we’ll all be wearing silly and expensive glasses just to watch Pat Sajak — or a neurosurgery operation. → Read More
In a post tinged with just a hint of spite, Apple pundit John Gruber has responded to today’s WSJ report of a forthcoming pair of new iPhones, one of which they say is headed for Verizon. His reaction? “Lame.” The reason it’s lame, says Gruber, is that it lacks details. Details which Gruber has. Maybe. → Read More
The first piece of software I ever wrote was on the TRS-80 Model 1. It was called “How To Juggle”, and it had 4K of memory. It was my version of “Hello World”, what every programmer first writes on a new piece of hardware. CLOAD Magazine purchased it for $75, they distributed it to their subscribers on a cassette (there weren’t disks for the TRS-80 yet). It was 1979. I was 15 years old, and I was a software entrepreneur. I still am.
Just five years later, I was an intern at Apple writing some of the first native assembly language on the Mac and working in a building called Bandley 4 with a pirate flag on the roof. Guy Kawasaki hired me to help developers write software on the Mac without using its predecessor, the Lisa (something that had been required when the Mac launched). My first example of how to write for the MDS 68000 development system manifested itself in a video game called “Raid on Armonk.” It was an allusion to IBM’s headquarters. They were the anti-Mac and we clicked and destroyed them. (Turns out they eventually clicked on themselves.) → Read More
While I doubt many of these kids know what they’re singing, it’s nice to see so many young minds perverted by the words of Jonathon Coulton and GLADOS. → Read More
Make magazine has a special place in my heart, partly because I love the crazy stuff they come up with, and partly because they want to help you build the crazy stuff they come up with. When I was a youngster, we made a rudimentary version of a catapult in scouts. Sure, it didn’t work very well, and it was powered by a rubber band made from an inner tube, but you could sure launch a walnut with it. That’s why when I see a kit like this, I’m filled with an overwhelming urge to buy one. → Read More
Consider the iPad OS locked, loaded, and ready to go. A few hours after the first few iPad shipments have trickled into the shipping warehouses, Apple has just released iPhone SDK 3.2 in it’s GM (or “Goldmaster”, a fancy industry way of saying “absolutely final. Like, seriously, seriously final.”) form. → Read More
Stargate shows have always featured aliens, but they weren’t alien-ish for the most part. The story line of SG-1 and Atlantis of course supported the creative (and budget) decision, but SGU is different. This time our cast is exploring exploring the very deepest parts of space and so the aliens should be different. And different they are. → Read More
Got a T-Mobile Cliq? Feeling lucky? Be sure to stick around T-Mobile’s community forum today at around 6 PST. According to our buddies over at TmoNews and this screenshot they obtained, 1,000 quick-fingered Cliq users will be getting early access to a software update that the rest of the Cliq-bearing public won’t see until next week.
Check after the jump for the patch notes. → Read More
I understand the desire to have your computer stuff look good, really I do. But things like this are just silly to me. They are obviously pointed at a market that doesn’t know any better, and buy things based on the appearance rather then the functionality. Brinell, the company that makes these fancy veneer clad drives, has even won a couple of design awards for their form over function. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
