It’s the last day of the first edition of the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, and our awesome program continues to be, well, awesome.
Earlier this morning, we had Twitter inventor Jack Dorsey do a demo of Square, and we also had David S. Kidder, CEO of search advertising startup Clickable, show off a brand new product the company is cooking up. → Read More
If you thought Zynga’s recent peace treaty with Facebook meant the end of its efforts to expand its reach beyond the social network, think again. Today, Zynga has announced that it has forged a deal with Yahoo to feature its games throughout Yahoo’s network — a move that will put Zynga’s games in front of Yahoo’s 600 million users.
At this point details on the deal are a bit vague — the games aren’t rolling out onto Yahoo for a couple of months, and neither company has announced which games will be integrated. That said, we can likely expect Zynga megahits like Farmville to be featured prominently, perhaps even on the Yahoo Homepage (which would be a huge win for Zynga). Yahoo also says that games and/or updates will be available through many of its properties, including the Yahoo Games portal, Yahoo Mail, and Yahoo Messenger. Games will be deployed in the US first, followed by a global rollout. → Read More
Today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York, Square co-founder Jack Dorsey took the stage to show a demo of Square running on the iPhone. To do the demo, Dorsey had a good idea: take money from Michael Arrington.
Dorsey took $100 from Mike with the swipe of a credit card. Mike was concerned about Dorsey’s intentions for the money, but it will actually go towards Charity Water as a donation, Dorsey assured. He then sat down to talk a bit with Mike and Erick Schonfeld about Square, and his experience raising funding. → Read More
While AT&T are still happy to be rolling in the money brought in from the iPhone exclusivity agreement, they aren’t stupid enough to ignore the other mobile platform completely.
AT&T have previously announced that there will be 5 Android handsets launching in 2010, and we now have word that the first of these 5 (the second in their history) will be the HTC Aria. → Read More
Today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York, Justin Bieber’s manager, Scooter Braun, talked about the megastar’s usage of Twitter. It was brilliant. “What other way is a teenage boy going to talk to girls?,” Braun quipped.
Bieber currently has around 2.7 million followers on Twitter, making him one of the most-followed people on the service. But more impressively, Bieber has seemed to dominate Twitter’s Trending Topics area lately. Or rather, he did. Then something happened. “Twitter, if you’re here. You changed your algorithm,” Braun half-joked. → Read More
Intel Capital is investing $10 million in TRA (which stands for ‘True ROI Accountability for Media’), a media planning, measurement and analytics software company. Funding for the investment comes from the $200 million Intel Capital Invest in America Technology Fund.
Intel’s capital injection is part of an $18.2 million Series C round, which includes participation from existing investors Arbitron and WPP. → Read More
Today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York, Square co-founder (and Twitter creator) Jack Dorsey took the stage to demonstrate Square working on the iPhone. He also sat down with our own Michael Arrington and Erick Schonfeld to talk a bit about his success. And Dorsey had some advice for new entrepreneurs looking to raise money.
Mike noted that Dorsey is sort of a celebrity in the tech community now so raising money for Square was pretty easy. That’s true. Dorsey said that he took two weeks and scheduled 25 meetings in Silicon Valley and New York to talk to venture capitalists about Square. This resulted in Square being valued at $40 million before it even launched. → Read More
Another day, another leak, right? Next up we have the Samsung LiMo-R3-powered i8330. The device will form part of the Vodafone 360 lineup in Europe, and will be known as the H2.
The specs so far seem decent, with a 1GHz Cortex A8 processor, an 800×480 Super AMOLED screen, 8MP autofocus + flash camera with HD video recording, and the usual GPS, and WiFi, as well as a touch of HSDPA. → Read More
At TechCrunch Disrupt this morning Troy Carter, Founder & CEO, Coalition Media Group and worldwide Manager for pop star Lady Gaga sat down with Scooter Braun, Founder & Chair, SB Projects and worldwide Manager for fellow pop star Justin Bieber to discuss the digital era’s implications for musicians.
The hot topic of the conversation was YouTube and Twitter. Carter said openly that he and Lady Gaga “create music videos for YouTube.” Braun agreed with Carter, saying that Bieber represented a new strategy of creating a breakout teenage star. Braun said that previously teenage music stars has to have a show on Nickelodeon or Disney. But Bieber changed this; he was found on YouTube and his first videos singing Aretha Franklin’s Respect saw 55 million views by the time the artist signed a record deal with Universal Music. He ended up going Platinum shortly after. → Read More
OLEDs, which are said to lead the next wave of innovation in the TV space (after back-lit LCDs and 3D displays), come with plenty of advantages: they produce gorgeous images, they are self-luminous, light, and they’re flexible – very flexible. Case in point: a super-thin, Sony-made 4.1-inch OLED that actually wraps around a pencil, shown today in Japan. → Read More
It seems like only hours ago that a leaked shot of the yet-to-be-announced Motorola Shadow emerged, yet here we are with another shot of the possible successor to the Droid.
This time around there is no wacky story accompanying the leak, but this is the first shot of the device that hasn’t been directly front-facing (you can clearly see the HDMI connector on the side there), so at least that’s interesting. → Read More
When it comes to billing headaches, there are few industries that can rival the cable companies: from the dizzying array of channel packages to actually figuring out which services you can get at your house, ordering cable or satellite service is often a major pain (and you inevitably walk away from the experience feeling like you’re somehow getting ripped off). Now BillShrink is launching a new feature that looks to make these headaches a thing of the past, putting its cost-cutting engine against a huge database of television service options to help you pick out the best one.
Using the new feature is simple: enter your address and how much you currently pay for your television service. Next, tell BillShrink what categories of channels you’re interested in; options include entertainment, lifestyle, movies, and sports. If there are some channels you absolutely have to have, you can list those too (you can even enter the name of your favorite TV shows, and BillShrink will figure out what channel they air on). → Read More
Yesterday MasterCard announced a definitive plan to open up its credit cards payments platform to developers to build innovative online and mobile apps. Of course, this has been the territory that PayPal has basked in, thanks to a much hyped launch of its API, PayPal X. PayPal senior director of PayPal X, Damon Hougland was quick to defend its place in the arena, saying that since its API was released last Fall, “thousands of developers have signed up, hundreds of apps have been built, and millions of dollars have transacted over our platform.”
While this is at the forefront of innovation for MasterCard, PayPal says that the developers who are building off of its platform are ahead of the curve. The company cites Bump, a technology to swap information between smartphones by tapping them together, which is used in PayPal’s iPhone app, allowing people to “bump” iPhones to transfer money (the app was downloaded more than one million times in the first three weeks it was out). → Read More
Hello, Chair, the company that develops a social app recommendation engine within an iPhone app, has raised $850,000 in funding from Harrison Metal Capital, Mitch Kapor, Chris Sacca, and Wilson Sonsini. The startup previously raised money from Y Combinator and David Parker.
Hello, Chair’s Appsaurus competes with the Apple Genius feature, serving as recommendation service for mobile apps on the iPhone. Here’s how it works. After launching the application, you’ll be presented with a handful of semi-popular apps from the App Store and asked to pick the one you like best. Once you pick your favorite, it shows you another round of apps. After four rounds or so, the app begins to learn your preferences, and you keep ranking more apps to help fine-tune its recommendations. In essence, it’s trying to build a profile based on your entire library of apps, not just one. If you’re presented with an application that you’ve never heard of, you can hit an arrow to read its summary and see screenshots. → Read More
Traveling around the world, learning, networking, sharing – that’s what GeeksOnAPlane (GOAP), a field trip of sorts (which takes place a couple of times a year), is mainly about. This time, the tour is leading a group of 30+ geeks (mainly from the US) to no less than five tech hot spots in Asia: Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul, Singapore, and Tokyo. I am joining the trip as an embedded blogger, exploring the current trends in Asia’s web and mobile world, and the implications of the Asian tech revolution for the industry in the US and elsewhere. → Read More
TechCrunch Nordic – Copenhagen – 26th May 2010
TechCrunch Europe is hosting its 3rd TechCrunch Nordic event – joining the Seedcamp startup programme on their European tour in Copenhagen.
Below you’ll find our live stream from the event which kicks off at 2.30pm Copenhagen time. → Read More
The BBC’s video on demand service, iPlayer is introducing social networking features which should further boost the uptale of Twitter and Facebook in the UK – as if they needed any boosting. The new iPlayer Beta is set to go live officially at the end of June.
Twitter, Facebook and Windows Live Messenger will be linked to a user’s “BBC ID” which they get when they register on BBC.co.uk. Users will be able to share what they’re watching over social networks (queue lots of “Watching Britains Got Talent” updates) while Windows Messenger will show in real-time how many minutes a user is in to a program on iPlayer and allow them to sync viewing with friends and chat about the show in realtime. The features will also work for BBC radio stations. → Read More
Concrete USB drives weigh as much as they hold Lamp poster (poster lamp?) adds a surrealist bent to your bedroom Super Mario Bro. Crossover gets Ryu from Ninja Gaiden mTouch: An affordable multi-touch web table SNES HD emulator for iPad looks sick – even the iPhone controller → Read More
A hundred startups lined-up the Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt. Here’s just a small taste of some of the interesting companies that over 1,700 attendees were able to see:
6rounds, which we wrote about in a previous post can be best described as a snazzy one-on-one video chat product.
At TechCrunch Disrupt, 6rounds announced a new API for developers of game, entertainment and collaboration-based apps. With the API, developers can easily integrate all the rich and interactive functionality of 6rounds, including gifting, video effects, and the ability to add multi-user functionality to single player games and videos.
More after the jump… → Read More
It’s so appropriate yet sad that Alyx is tasked with announcing the six-year old Half-Life 2′s Mac launch. But really there’s no shame in playing the some-what old Half-Life 2 even today. It’s one of the games that we agreed with in PC Gamer’s top games of all time list. But it’s yet another sign that the Mac gaming scene still has a long way to go. → Read More
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