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
Audio-Technica today in Japan announced [JP] diamond-shaped portable speakers, dubbed Bijoué/AT-SPF30, which are especially geared towards female users. Technically, the speakers aren’t special: you’ll get 600mW/φ28mm full range speakers running on two AAA batteries for 33 hours continuously. → Read More
This morning in a letter published in the Washington Post, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has responded to the barrage of criticism that has been directed toward the site since its set of announcements at f8. The key message: Zuckerberg says that with respect to its privacy controls “[Facebook] just missed the mark.”
The letter isn’t particularly apologetic — you won’t find words like “sorry”, “fault”, or “mistake”. Instead, it’s more of an acknowledgment that Facebook has heard the criticism and will be responding to it. Soon, Facebook will be rolling out a new set of simplified privacy controls and an easy way to “turn off all third-party services”. Here are some key quotes from Zuckerberg’s letter: → Read More
So mr. Jobs is saying we won’t be disappointed by the announcements that will be made at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference.
And now the company has been gracious enough to also let us know when exactly he’ll be delivering.
Mark the date: the man’s keynote address kicks off on Monday 7 June at 10 AM PST.
We know a new iPhone is coming – but what else? → Read More
Email marketing company Constant Contact has acquired NutshellMail, a FbFund-backed startup that provides an innovative web-based service that lets users send and receive your messages from social networks, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter, in your email inbox. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Founded in 2007, NutshellMail was one of twenty startups incubated within the 2009 class of fbFund REV, Facebook’s joint program with Accel Partners and Founders Fund aimed to help foster quality applications on Facebook Platform. → Read More
Uh-oh. Looks like the latest update to the HD2 from T-mobile has caused a few “issues” and has had to be removed from the T-mobile update site.
Different users have reported different issues ranging from a not-so-terrible reduction in battery life, to a much-more-serious bricking of the phone. → Read More
Brian at PocketNow posted a browser comparison video showing the iPhone, the Nexus One, and the HTC HD2 all viewing the same websites. He installed Froyo on the Nexus One and downloaded the Flash beta which allows him to run almost all Flash content. It’s really long.While I do enjoy a long video of a man playing with Android phones, 11 minutes worth of a man playing with phones (found after the jump) might be a bit tiring. However, the money shot comes at about 1:40 where you see some Flash games playing in the wild. I think the most interesting part of that part of the video is how close Flash games running on a good processer are to standard, natively written games. So fine, you say, things look great. Why not run Flash? → Read More
SCVNGR, the location- and mobile-based social gaming platform, has an offer for those of you lucky enough to be here at TechCrunch Disrupt. They’ve created a trek (a set of challenges, to the uninitiated) based on locations in and around Disrupt, and if you’re game, you stand a chance of winning a shiny new iPad.
I’m guessing there will be a number of check-in missions in addition to more involved ones like making a tower of Red Bull cans. I’d throw my hat into the ring, except I’ve already got more iPads than I know what to do with. I’m considering building a sort of shrine. But if you could use an iPad, and you have an iPhone or Android device, go download the SCVNGR app and start trekking. → Read More
By now we’ve all seen the many, many, many and more photos (and video) that have been leaked of the up-n-coming BlackBerry 9800 slider phone.
So you’re probably not that amazed by the new batch of photos that have emerged over at The Berry Fix.
However, the photographer behind this latest photo shoot does have some interesting news for y’all: the new slider won’t be using RIM’s trademark, annoying SurePress technology. → Read More
IBM is acquiring Sterling Commerce from AT&T for approximately $1.4 billion in cash. Sterling Commerce applications streamline the commerce lifecycle from selling to fulfillment to payments. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2010.
IBM says the acquisition of Sterling will expand its ability to help organizations connect and communicate with customers, partners and suppliers both on-premise or through cloud computing delivery models.More than 18,000 customers use Sterling Commerce offerings. → Read More
One of the biggest problems that stands between electric vehicles and becoming mainstream is limited battery life. But there has been some progress in that area lately: the Japan Electric Vehicle Club [JP], a civic group based in Tokyo, announced today a Mira EV customized by the group traveled exactly 1,003.184 kilometers without a recharge. → Read More
We are only a few hours away from kicking off the first ever TechCrunch Disrupt conference and we are thrilled to announce the 20 startups that were chosen out of hundreds to present their applications over the next few days. We will also hear pitches from the two StartupAlley companies that receive the most votes over the next two days.
These startups will battle it out over three intense days, with one of these startups eventually taking home $50,000. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
