That Nike World Cup ad I mentioned the other day has aired, I think, 800 million times over the past few days on TV. I know I saw it at least once during the Champions League final at the weekend (which Inter thoroughly deserved to win). But get this: the very first time the ad aired in the UK the final six seconds of the ad never made it on the air! Someone’s getting fired… → Read More
I’ve used a number of Bluetooth headsets, and I really tried to make myself comfortable while wearing them. None of them have been quite comfortable enough for me, and I feel like I’m missing out on sounds around me when the piece is sitting dormant in my ear. Perhaps the new Sound ID 510 headset, coupled with the EarPrint App, will solve my concerns. → Read More
We told you Comcast was introducing something fresh and exciting at TechCrunch Disrupt this year. Say hello to Tunerfish, incubated by the Plaxo team (Comcast acquired Plaxo in 2008) and led by former Plaxo VP of Marketing John McCrea.
Tunerfish is driven by people’s passion for TV shows, and revolves around the ability for people to share what they are watching in real time. Launching in the near future, McCrea billed Tunerfish as a ‘social discovery engine’ for video content. → Read More
Notebook and netbook maker Asus is pre-installing the Amazon Kindle for PC application, allowing Asus owners to access Amazon’s selection of e-books without having to suffer through the pain of software installation on their own time. Not much more to say about this, except that it further cements Amazon’s hegemony in the e-book market. How will Barnes and Noble respond, I wonder? → Read More
TechCrunch Disrupt kicked off this morning, with interviews with Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr and DST’s Yuri Milner. Next up, we’re discussing the future of music, TV, games and publishing. Michael Wolf, Founder and Managing Director, Activate is leading the discussion with Sarah Chubb, President, Conde Nast Digital; Fred Davis, Founding Partner, CODE Advisors; John Hagel, Co-Chairman, Center for the Edge, Deloitte; and Avner Ronen, CEO, Boxee.
Wolf highlighted the newly announced Google TV as being disruptive to the media space. Ronen’s Boxee, which also streams media from your computer to a TV, says that he thinks the Android-based platform could be complimentary to his application. → Read More
Today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York City, there was a panel with the video comedy house Funny Or Die. Mark Kvamme, a partner at Sequoia Capital (which invested in Funny Or Die) moderated a panel with Funny Or Die’s Dick Glover, Chris Henchy, and Andrew Steele. The topic was the disruption of old media with this new model of short, cheap videos. All seemed confident they would not only be able to compete with the old guard but would change the business growing forward.
Funny Or Die is already doing “tens of millions of dollars in revenue,” according to Kvamme. When he tells that to people, they don’t believe him. But advertisers are starting to come with million-dollar deals as the site grows in popularity. And while the revenues still may be nothing compared to what traditional Hollywood gets, the key is that the overhead costs are a fraction of the costs of what they are in Hollywood. Kvamme says that when he recently showed off a video to Fox, they thought it cost them tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars to make. It actually only cost them $2,200. → Read More
Google has (finally) released its revenue share breakdown for AdSense.
Publishers apparently earn a 68% revenue share worldwide, meaning Google pays 68% of the revenue that they collect from advertisers. Since launching AdSense for Content in 2003, this revenue share has never changed. For Search, partners see a 51% revenue share for the search ads that appear through their site. → Read More
So you just woke up. You had some cereal, some coffee. Hit the old elliptical and then took a shower and went to work. You fire up the old PC, get the TPS reports ready, and while the FTOPS are loading you visit CrunchGear. You play the video above. You realize that your entire world, one day very soon, will change. You discover that LittleDog is the robot that will kill and macerate you. → Read More
Twitter just put up a blog post talking up its platform approach and long-term strategy. In that same post, however, the company has made some decisions that are sure to irk a couple of third-party developers and startups.
Here’s the big news: aside from (its own) Promoted Tweets, Twitter says it will not be allowing any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API. The changes will be reflected in an updated set of Terms & Conditions, which is due to be released ‘shortly’.
Update: here it is (details after the jump) → Read More
Match.com and Yahoo are going steady now. Yahoo Personals is out. This morning, Yahoo announced that Match.com will become the exclusive online dating site on Yahoo. Yahoo’s current online dating site, Personals, will be folded into a new co-branded site called “Match.com on Yahoo.” Match already powers Yahoo Personals in a number of European markets.
Yahoo Personals users will be encouraged to migrate to Match.com on Yahoo and given the opportunity to seamlessly migrate their Yahoo Personals accounts over to the new site. Match.com on Yahoo will offer users mobile access, daily personalized matches and more advanced search tools. → Read More
Google’s playable Pac-man logo surely cost the worldwide economy millions of man-hours last week. It was originally only supposed to up for only two day. That’s changed. It will now reside forever at Google.com/Pacman. We heart Google. → Read More
So you’ve just updated your shiny Nexus One to Android 2.2 (aka Froyo) complete with flash support, and you’re jonesing to watch your favorite episode of Glee while on your way to work on this dreary Monday morning.
If you were a true Gleek, you’d have already fired up the browser, navigated over to Hulu, and found nothing but disappointment. You’ve been burned by licensing deals yet again. Sad face.
So whaddaya do? Well, you lucky dawg, there is a way. Follow me, I will show you how. → Read More
TweetUp, the Twitter-focused search and advertising startup that was incubated by idealab – the original Overture founders – is launching today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York City.
Serial entrepreneur Bill Gross took the stage for the event’s first ‘for show launch’ and publicly debuted TweetUp’s core service – the startup had earlier opened the gates for early-adopting advertisers only (their blog post is up too). → Read More
While we already knew the subject of this news, Yahoo’s CEO Carol Bartz officially announced Project Nike, a distribution partnership with Nokia this morning. Nokia will build Yahoo email, search, and other applications into their devices.
As part of the agreement, Nokia will be the exclusive, global provider of Yahoo’s maps and navigation services, integrating Ovi Maps across Yahoo properties, branded as “powered by Ovi.” Yahoo will become the exclusive, global provider of Nokia’s Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat services branded as “Ovi Mail / Ovi Chat powered by Yahoo!”. Nokia and Yahoo also plan to work on ID federation between their services. Select, co-branded service offerings are expected to become available from the second half of 2010, with global availability expected in 2011. → Read More
If you hadn’t heard of Russian Internet holding company Digital Sky Technologies one year ago, you probably weren’t alone. But last May — almost exactly one year ago — DST took the tech industry by storm with a $200 million investment in Facebook. It followed that up with a huge investment in Zynga, one in Groupon (and another in Facebook). Today at TechCrunch Disrupt, renowned interviewer Charlie Rose is sitting down with DST co-founder and CEO Yuri Milner to talk about Facebook’s dominance, social gaming, and more. → Read More
Couldn’t make it to TC Disrupt? You’ll miss all the hallway deals, but you don’t have to miss the show. Watch our full coverage right here livestreamed all day, for the next three days. Starting with Charlie Rose and John Doerr through to all the Startup Battlefield launches, we’ll have live and archived video.
So stick around and watch. And if your boss asks you what you are doing, say that it is market research. → Read More
Earlier this year, we covered the launch of Flixtime - an Animoto-like slideshow generation platform developed by Franco-American online stock photo giant Fotolia. When Flixtime first came out, the service naturally seemed basic in comparison to Animoto – which has been in the slideshow space since 2006. However, only a few months into its existence with over 50,000 free videos created on its site, it seems Flixtime is already throwing punches at Animoto with some new features that go live on the site today. → Read More
To all those Samsung enthusiasts living in Europe: this one’s for you.
Samsung today announced that the Bada-powered Wave is now available in the UK and France (it has been available in Germany for about a week).
UK Vodafone fans can grab the phone for free on a £25 per month plan, but no outright prices have yet been announced for the UK or France. However, eager Germans can pick it up for €429. → Read More
Today’s the opening day our of TechCrunch Disrupt conference, and we’re starting it off with a bang. Famed interviewer/journalist/host Charlie Rose is talking to John Doerr, partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Doerr is known for his massively successful investments in companies such as Google, Amazon, Intuit, and more recently Zynga (among many others).
Rose asked Doerr for his thoughts about what’s coming next. Doerr says that’s we’re on the third great wave of innovation. The first was the microchip/PC in the 80s. The second was the Internet in the 90s. And now we’re entering a wave of social, mobile, and new commerce, Doerr says.
And what’s leading that wave? The iPad. → Read More
