When we dug up some evidence yesterday that Boost Mobile would be getting the US’s first pre-paid Android phone in the form of Motorola’s crazy-tough, push-to-talk i1, there was one bit we were missing: the price. Fortunately, that didn’t stay a secret for very long. → Read More
Today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York, AOL co-founder (and former CEO) Steve Case took the stage to talk with Michael Arrington. He was full of interesting things to say — especially since current AOL CEO Tim Armstrong was on the stage earlier and the two just celebrated AOL’s 25th anniversary. But the funniest little anecdote from Case involved Yahoo.
People may recall that there was talk that Yahoo would buy and/or merge with AOL two years ago as Yahoo was being pursued by Microsoft. But what you may not recall is that back in the 1990s, when AOL was at the height of its power, Case actually offered to buy Yahoo. Yahoo obviously didn’t accept the offer. But they may have if the offer were just a little higher, Case says. → Read More
In the spirit of disruption, GE is bypassing the traditional agency model for marketing campaigns. The company has set up both a basic Google Moderator tool at ge.com/adideas and a dedicated email inbox (ad.ideas@ge.com) in order to solicit ideas from anyone (including industry pros).
In the spirit of disruption, GE is bypassing the traditional agency model for marketing campaigns. The company has set up both a basic Google Moderator tool and a dedicated email inbox (ad.ideas@ge.com) in order to solicit ideas from anyone (including industry pros). → Read More
It was almost exactly one year ago that Google released the first dev build of Chrome for Mac and Linux. At the time, even though they released it, they didn’t really want you to use it. It simply wasn’t stable. Now it is. And as such, it’s finally being formally released.
Google announced today that Chrome for Mac and Linux has caught up with the stable (and older) Windows build of the browser. As such, they’re ready to take both builds out of beta for the first time. And these new stable releases come with new features such as more advanced syncing (bookmarks, preferences, settings, etc). And it’s full of HTML5 tools like Geolocation APIs, App Cache, and web sockets. And access to the over 4,500 Chrome extensions. → Read More
You’ve been waiting for it! It’s the Dell Streak and it’s coming to a Carphone Warehouse near you! Wait, what? The Streak, Dell’s 5-inch Android tablet, will arrive in June with O2, price to be announced. The device will come with 3G connectivity and should be subsidized by the carrier. Want the Streak in the US? It won’t arrive until “later this summer,” which is a big old bummer. I’ve actually seen this guy IRL and it’s pretty cool. Press release after the jump. → Read More
We’re still here at the first TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York. Up on stage right now is an interesting group of people discussing how brands can best engage with digital audiences in this day and age.
This is an overview of what Judy Hu, Global Executive Director of Advertising & Branding at GE, Brian Pokorny (CEO of dailybooth), Christopher ‘moot’ Poole of 4chan fame and Andrey Ternovskiy, who started Chatroulette, had to say about that. → Read More
Just a couple of days after PaidContent ran a story about freelance news site True/Slant reportedly being in M&A talks, Forbes Media announced today that it has agreed “in principle” to buy the company.
True/Slant founder and CEO Lewis Dvorkin will be joining Forbes to lead all editorial areas at Forbes as Chief Product Officer effective June 1. → Read More
Who’s nailed peer-to-peer live streaming video on smartphones such as iPhone and Android? It’s not Qik, Ustream or Justin.tv, it’s Knocking Live, an application by bootstrapped Point Heads Software. Interestingly enough, Knocking Live reached 1 million users faster than Foursquare or Gowalla did (see graph). Pointy Heads released Knocking Live in December in collaboration with Sourcebits, and have since amassed 1.6 million downloads. They’re here at TechCrunch Disrupt‘s Startup Alley, among a plethora of other great companies. The app has all sorts of uses, but one crazy guy decided to strap their iPhone to an RC Airplane and stream a live feed of the view from the sky. It’s as cool as it sounds. Hit the jump for the video. → Read More
The Viliv P3 made its first appearance at CES 2010. The company even had a demo unit for everyone to play with but it was just that, a demo. We couldn’t see the Windows CE/Android dual booting or if the unit could actually play back 1080p content like Viliv states. Maybe now that the PMP is featured on Viliv’s site, its launch is right around the corner. But then if Viliv follows its own trend, we’ll have to wait months for the unit to be imported to the States from South Korea. So we wait. → Read More
Today, TechCrunch Disrupt attendees were treated to a very special guest: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg addressed the audience of entrepreneurs, urging them to make their way to New York City to start their next venture. As he put it, “When you want to start a business, you don’t have any choice. This is where the best and the brightest are.”
Mayor Bloomberg also announced that New York City and FirstMark Capital have teamed to offer a $22 million fund to fuel entrepreneurship in NYC. The city has set aside $3 million for the fund, and FirstMark is contributing the remainder. The first company to receive funding from the NYC Entrepreneurial Fund is MyCityWay.
Here’s a full video of Mayor Bloomberg’s talk (which was followed by a brief Q&A). My notes on the talk are below that. → Read More
iGlue, which wants to “wikify the web“, has raised a further $550,000 funding from private investors alongside Hungary-based Power of the Dream Ventures.
The application unveiled at the recent GeeknRolla event in London, is pretty interesting in that it creates an additional information layer over web pages by using natural language technology to understand its content. The browser widget recognizes names of relevant entities, such as people, geographical locations, institutions etc. and on the spot displays related data, images, videos, events in a timeline. → Read More
It’s no secret that AOL is aggressively building out its content strategy. Today at TechCrunch Disrupt, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong says that the company now employs 4,000 journalists, 3,500 of which are part-time or freelance. As of last October, the company employed roughly 3,000 journalists.
That’s pretty decent growth in a matter of six months. Of course, AOL has launched a number of content initiatives, including buying hyperlocal news site Patch and launching content machine Seed.com. Armstrong says that AOL is really “taking local to a local level.” Patch is now in 53 markets in 5 states, including Connecticut and California. And it’s been reported that AOL will pour $50 million into Patch this year and plans to roll out the model to “hundreds” of communities in the future. → Read More
We’ve already gotten word of the T-mobile myTouch 3G Slide specs. We also know that it will be released on the 2nd of June for $179.99. We’ve even had our own hands-on. But there is one little maneuver left in the dance of phone revelations: the unboxing.
And here it is. → Read More
There aren’t many Internet events that are better suited to entertain office drones than a Woot-Off. Simply load it in a tab — or another window if your operation is still rocking IE6 — and waste away your day checking for a new item every few minutes. At least that’s what I did when I was in the corporate world. Perhaps that’s why I’m no longer there? Oh well. Woot-Off! → Read More
Straight from the horse’s mouth: AOL CEO Tim Armstrong just told the TechCrunch Disrupt audience what most industry watchers already knew: the company made a strategic mistake in acquiring social network Bebo, and it ended up being a “major distraction” for them.
Armstrong admitted that it would have been very hard to make Bebo work right out the gate no matter what, and that probably the deal shouldn’t have gone through in the first place, given technology and other issues. → Read More
If you can’t get a signal in Manhattan, blame AT&T. They’ve pretty much admitted that their network in New York is completely inadequate, and now, three years in, they’re taking some concrete steps to alleviate the problem — for tourists, at least. → Read More
Like the camera sitting on the face of every single leaked iPhone HD hasn’t been proof enough, or like the references to video chat in the beta SDKs didn’t mean anything, now we have even more proof that there will be video chat capabilities in the upcoming iPhone HD (or whatever it will be called). Right now, filming is underway for the new iPhone commercials (directed by Sam Mendes, of American Beauty fame), and Engadget have it on good authority that one scene will feature a mother and daughter video-chatting to each other using their next-gen iPhones. Aw, how sweet. Of course, don’t expect any official confirmation before June 7th, but I think this one’s a pretty safe bet. → Read More
Yext, a popular local business search engine, debuted Yext Calls last year at TechCrunch50, which is sort of like a Google Voice for businesses. Yext allows local businesses to use its software to process incoming phone calls and organize them based on what was said during the conversation. This gives businesses the ability to search or browse through the transcripts and calls at any point. Based on keywords that occurred in the call, the software can detect that e.g. price estimates were requested for a car repair or which part of what type of vehicle the caller was having problems with exactly.
But Yext says that in the realtime web, it’s tough to manage your reputation as a business. So the startup is launching a realtime reputation manager for local businesses. It will claim your local business listing on sites like Citysearch, Yelp, YellowPages, Twitter, Facebook and more. The site will pull reviews for a local business on all these sites, a track each review for positive ore negative feedback. → Read More
