There’s no question that Facebook’s new social plugins — which include a ‘Like’ button for the web and an array of other widgets — have been adopted at a pretty amazing rate (we had our ‘Like’ buttons live the day they were announced). Facebook has just given us an idea of how quickly these widgets are being adopted: a week after f8, 50,000 websites now feature the Like button and the other new plugins.
75 of those websites were Facebook’s launch partners, which included sites like CNN and the New York Times — everyone else handled the integration on their own, which Facebook has made very straightforward (it generally just involves copy-and-pasting a few lines of code). This growth is important, because as more sites integrate these social widgets, Facebook will increasingly own social interaction across the web. → Read More
PC gamers will remember the original Red Faction, and console gamers will remember its disappointing sequel. Then everybody will remember Red Faction: Guerrilla, its awesome threequel. Well, it looks like the franchise is expanding its tentacles (or rather, it is entangling its tentacles with SyFy’s) and going into the motion picture business. Sure, it’s just a made-for-TV movie right now, but it could turn into a series, and Red Faction is just the first of a big SyFy push into the games world. → Read More
Exciting news from Plex, the media center for Mac OS X that won my heart a long time ago. The devs have announced that they’ve integrated Apple’s new video decode acceleration framework into the latest build. In English, that means all h.264-encoded video—and there’s a lot of it out there—can be sent to your GPU for decoding, giving your CPU a bit more breathing room. It should make for significantly better 1080p video performance. → Read More
Remember that hacking incident we had back in January? TechCrunch.com was defaced twice over a two day period and was redirecting for part of that time to a third party site.
We got through the event and mostly put it behind us. But recently Garda (Ireland’s national police force) and the U.S. Secret Service have been in touch with us because they think they found our man. He’s a suspect in another case and evidence strongly suggesting he was the TechCrunch hacker as well came to their attention. He redirects hacked sites to a website he owns and generates affiliate revenue.
These law enforcement agencies now want to know if we want to press charges so that they can bring a criminal action against the suspect in the United States. → Read More
When it comes to academic research, it’s easy to think that academics are always privy to what their peers are up to, and are up-to-date on the latest research papers in their field. Unfortunately, that’s not usually the case. Academia.edu is a site that’s looking to help change that, by helping researchers connect to each other and find material that’s relevant to their field of study. The site recently closed a $1.6 million Series A round led by Spark Ventures, with participation from angel investors including Mark Shuttleworth (Thawte founder, Ubuntu); Thomas Lehrman (Gerson Lehrman Group co-founder) and Rupert Pennant-Rea (Chairman of The Economist).
CEO Richard Price believes that the community of academics has largely been neglected as the web has evolved, and he’s looking to change that with Academia.edu. The site, which launched in September 2008, serves as a sort of hybrid between LinkedIn, Facebook and Geni, all with a focus on research. → Read More
Here we have what is allegedly a “confirmed” E3 lineup. Let’s see… Guitar Hero 6, big surprise there… Call of Duty: MMO… KI3, maybe that’s Killer Instinct 3? And what’s Mass Effect 3 doing under the Sony heading? → Read More
The iPad went on sale 25 days ago. It’s not yet on sale anywhere else in the world besides the U.S. The 3G version, which some are waiting for, still isn’t available. And yet, according to our logs, the iPad already accounts for more traffic to TechCrunch than Android does.
I love the iPad, but even I was surprised when I saw this. The stats are for the last 30 days — and again, the iPad hasn’t even been out that entire time. Here’s a percentage breakdown of which OS visitors to TechCrunch have been using in the past 30 days: → Read More
I’m not sure what this says about the iPad or Louis Vuitton. On one hand it speaks volumes about the iPad’s culturally significance that just weeks after its launch, trendy leather goods maker Louis Vuitton feels confident about the device to announces cases. But then what does it say about Louis Vuitton who is clearly willing to jump on bandwagons right away. Then again, what the hell do I know about Louis Vuitton or trendy culture? → Read More
How much did Apple pay for the acquisition of Siri, the maker of a mobile virtual personal assistant app? Apple won’t say, and neither will the company or its investors. I spoke with two Siri board members today, and neither would go near the subject. “I can confirm the transaction has happened, but nothing about the transaction itself or Apple’s plans,” says Gary Morgenthaler of Morgenthaler Ventures. “All I can say is we are pleased,” says SRI’s Norman Winarsky. I even asked Siri’s app on my iPhone. It directed me to a nearby Apple Store.
But if the buzz in Silicon Valley is correct, Siri’s investors have a lot to be pleased about. I’ve been digging around. Sources I trust with indirect knowledge of the transaction peg it at between $150 million to $250 million, with the strongest rumor being “more than $200 million.” Siri’s investors put a total of $24 million into the startup, so that would make the exit at least an eight-bagger.
Why did Apple pay so much for an iPhone app company? When you look at Siri as an iPhone app with only about a quarter million downloads of its free app, the price seems very expensive. But what Apple really bought was an entry into mobile search. → Read More
As expected, Chinese search giant Baidu posted strong first quarter results thanks in part to a gain in marketshare from Google. Total revenues in the first quarter of 2010 were $189.6 million, a 59.6% increase from the corresponding period in 2009. Net income in the first quarter of 2010 was $70.4 million, a 165.3% increase from the first quarter of 2009.
In the earnings release, Baidu’s chairman and CEO Robin Li also stated that new internet advertising product Phoenix Nest’s performance “continued to exceed” expectations. Baidu likely saw a flux in revenue from the product as it just replaced Baidu Bidding rank in December. Baidu was expected to see gains thanks to stronger paid search revenue as Google’s censorship issues with China escalated. Google shut down its Chinese search engine in late March in response to the widely reported cyber attack on Google in December 2009. → Read More
Damn you, Sapphire. Three weeks ago I bought your vanilla Radeon 5970, and now you release the Radeon 5970 4G TOXIC Edition? What a load of bunk. Fastest video card on the planet, you say? Well I say FE$%Fxtgredth. → Read More
On the heels of the report that Apple purchased chip maker Intrinsity, Apple appears to have made another purchase: Siri, a personal assistant for the iPhone. According to a pre-merger notification released by the Federal Trade Commission, and first noticed by Robert Scoble, the transaction will not be held up by any antitrust reviews. The deal was likely small from Apple’s perspective. Siri is a small startup that has raised $24 million in funding. Update: Siri board member Gary Morganthaler confirmed the transaction.
Siri brings a conversational interface to the iPhone which allows you to ask it to perform tasks for you such as find a French restaurant nearby and book a table, look up movie listings, order a taxi, or look up the phone number and address of a local business.You can read our full review of the app here. → Read More
America might finally catch up to Europe and Asia with offshore wind farms. The US federal government finally green lighted a project today that will bring a 24 square mile 130-turbine farm to the waters 5 miles off the coast of Cape Cod in Nantuket Sound. It’s said to generate 75% of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantuket’s power requirement. Great, right?
Well even though it’s been approved by state and federal government, okay’d by both Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, the project is still controversial and bound to be tied up in the courts for years. → Read More
As you may have heard, HP has just announced the acquisition of Palm for $1.2 billion. It’s a massive move that HP hopes will reshape the mobile industry. I got a chance to talk with Brian Humphries, HP’s Senior Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development, about the deal just now.
“This is a great opportunity to take two Silicon Valley idols and put them together,” Humphries noted. That’s an obvious statement, but he quickly moved on to the meat. “WebOS is the best-in-class mobile operating system. Our intent is to double down on webOS,” Humphries said. → Read More
Heads up to you Mac folk. Opera has released a new version of its eponymous browser, version 10.52, that brings a number of improvements to the game. Might be we worth a look if you’re tired of Safari and Firefox, or don’t want to subject yourself to the Google borg with Chrome. → Read More
We’ve all had the experience. You visit cnn.com looking to catch up on the day’s news and have a total WTF!? moment when instead you’re greeted by Jessica Alba’s plans to adopt a child. Meanwhile, bombs are exploding around the world, people are dying — but wait, what’s Tiger Woods thinking right now? Also, how do you harness the power of bugs?
A new site, WTF CNN?, compliments of Breadpig, shows you exactly what world news you’re missing by clicking on CNN. The way the site works is simple: CNN.com is displayed at the top of the page, and under it, you get a choice of seeing the frontpage from one of the following global news sites: ABC (Australia), Al-Jazeera (Qatar), BBC (UK), China Daily (C → Read More
Breaking news, fresh off of the wire: HP just finalized agreements to buy Palm for $1.2 billion dollars. HP’s $1.2 billion dollar purchase breaks down to roughly $5.70 per share of common stock. While this is spot on with the $1.2-$1.3 billion pricetag Palm was rumored to be shopping around as of late, it’s still a mammoth difference from what Palm was trading at just months ago. In October 2009, Palm was worth about $17.46 per share; by January of this year, that was down to $13.41. It has, unfortunately, been a downward spiral ever since. And for all you webOS fans out there: Don’t worry — it doesn’t look like the platform is going anywhere just yet. It appears that the companies plan to continue the development of webOS, leveraging HP to “rapidly accelerate the growth” of the platform. HP has seemingly been lightening their efforts in the pocketable mobile space lately — but with the iPAQ line and countless Pocket PC handsets behind them, they’re by no means strangers to it. However, the smartphone space might not be HP’s only interest here – given HP’s recent desire to take on Apple in the tablet space (with the HP Slate) and that Windows-powered tablets just don’t seem to sell, might we see a webOS-powered tablet sometime in the future? Paired with the proper hardware, webOS could easily make for an absolutely incredible tablet experience. Even if HP abandoned webOS altogether (which, again, doesn’t appear to be the plan right now), they just bought them selves a monstrous card to play: Palm’s patent catalog. It’s a porcupine tactic: It’s hard to make a big dent in the smartphone biz when every company around can throw patent infringement suits at you — but when you’ve got hundreds upon hundreds of patents (or quills) in your armory, people are going to be a whole lot more careful about stepping on you. Contrary to previous whispers, it appears that CEO Jon Rubinstein will be staying with the company. To quote the release, “Palm’s current chairman and CEO, Jon Rubinstein, is expected to remain with the company.” CrunchBase Information Hewlett-Packard Palm Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Google has warned THE INTERNET to be on the lookout for phony anti-virus software. The deal is that malicious software makers have started “hiding” malware inside software that purports to be anti-virus software. But it’s not anti-virus software! → Read More
Say goodbye to your lunch break. It’s called Super Mario Crossover, created by Exploding Rabbits, and it’s a Flash game that puts several classic video game characters inside the Mario universe. (I picked Mega Man, then died instantly. I’m not good.) You pretty much just need to play it right now. That’s all there is to it. → Read More
