In a little over 24 hours, the sun will rise on the second TechCrunch Disrupt conference, brilliantly titled “TechCrunch Disrupt: San Francisco“. (Rejected titles include “TechCrunch Disrupt 2: Money Never Sleeps”, “TechCrunch Disrupt 2: For a Few Dollars More”, and “TechCrunch Disrupt 2: I Still Know What You Did Last Summer”.)
For those of you who missed the inaugural Disrupt, held in New York back in May, the event is a mash-up of two formats: a start-up competition where 24 as-yet-unlaunched businesses compete for $50,000 and an old bowling trophy The TechCrunch Disrupt Cup – plus a star-studded conference where the likes of Eric Schmidt and Barry Diller take to the stage to inspire entrepreneurs and attempt to out-swear Carol Bartz. It’s a ridiculously impressive line-up, with a ratio of three Chabillionaires to every Chamillionaire. → Read More
Instead of another boring lecture, last week my students at UC-Berkeley got quite a treat: a lively discussion with TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington. I once described Mike as a cross between Oprah Winfrey and Howard Stern; so I was ready for a little controversy. But he ended up lighting such a big fire, that I’ve been bombarded with questions from students about their education and careers. The questions aren’t just coming from Berkeley; after the discussion was posted on TechCrunch, students at Duke asked me to discuss this at a keynote I am giving at their entrepreneurship symposium on Wednesday; and students at other schools, from as far as India and Singapore, have asked for advice. So I’ll just respond here in the hope of quenching this fire. → Read More
“The rules of media have completely been broken,” according to Say Media CEO Matt Sanchez. Because we’re no longer living in a world where print media is sold on a newstand and video media is only presented through cable television, everything is changing. And as old companies have to adopt to that change, there are opportunities for new empires to sprout up. And that’s exactly what Say Media is going for — and that’s why VideoEgg bought Six Apart last week, forming this new company.
I sat down with Sanchez the day after the deal was disclosed (we first broke the news of the deal the day before it happened) to get his take on why such a deal makes sense and what it means going forward. → Read More
In a week marked by Twitter and Facebook service fails, Google just became the third huge web service to experience turbulence, with primarily Brazilian social network Orkut being hit hard today by the “Bom Sabado” javascript worm, which infected user streams with a scrap with the text “Bom Sabado” and then automatically signed up those users for groups. → Read More
It launched with much fanfare, but I don’t think it was unreasonable to call Ping a dud out of the gate. While pretty much everyone initially signed up to try it out, a few days later, the activity stream seemed to trickle to almost nothing. And there was a good reason for that: Apple’s social network for music made it very hard to share stuff — you know, be social. But an update today makes it at least a thousand times better.
iTunes 10.0.1 released this morning brings some big Ping updates with it. Most notably, you can now use Ping with your own iTunes library. Previously, you could only share songs on Ping through the iTunes Store — a big difference. This basically meant that even if you already owned a song, you had to hunt it down in the iTunes Store to share it. This was almost laughably tedious, and it ensured that no one would use Ping for more than a couple days. → Read More
There are fewer than 48 hours to go before TechCrunch Disrupt kicks off, and we know you’re all aching to see some of the industry’s best investors, entrepreneurs and startups take the stage. We’ve got a little something to tide you over though the home stretch: yep, it’s the latest episode of OMG/JK.
This week fellow TechCrunch writer MG Siegler and I talk about the elusive (but totally real) Facebook phone, the reintroduction of Google Voice onto the Apple App Store, and the revamped #NewTwitter. We also briefly touch on Yahoo’s roadmap, only to realize that we still don’t have a clue what they’re up to. → Read More
Short version: It’s not for everybody, but it sure is for guys like me. This cleaning bot for hardwood floors is a dream come true for dust-haters, and it’s cute to boot. → Read More
Premiering at New York Film Festival yesterday and coming to theaters October 1st, the world’s first Hollywood movie about the founding of a social network can now also claim the bragging rights of a solid 100 score on movie review aggregator Metacritic as well as a 9.9 score on Rotten Tomatoes.
While both the Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes sample sizes are currently small, The Social Network joins The Godfather and Lawrence of Arabia (re-release) as one of the universally highest rated movies of all time. → Read More
Great news, folks! It looks like the firmware update to the EVO 4G that rolled out this week has removed the 30fps limit that was said to be imposed because of the HDMI port. Engadget have confirmed that the update does indeed remove the limitation, with their phone hitting 52 fps in benchmarks. The update also fixes the calendar event edit issue, an issue with multiple Gmail accounts that broke with the Froyo update, and a reboot problem caused by the GPS. So, if you haven’t already updated your device, your fast running out of excuses to do so. → Read More
That’s right, Panasonic has teamed up with the Charlotte Motor speedway. The new TV will weigh in at 165,000 pounds, and cover an area of 16,000 square feet. Now for the bad news, the TV will only be running 720p. Although when it’s that big of a TV I doubt anyone will notice.. [via Geeky Gadgets] → Read More
We’ve all had a pretty long week dealing with all this, for lack of a better term, AngelGate stuff. For the people involved, me included, it hasn’t been much fun.
Mostly because angel investors as a group do so much for our community. They are the grease that let so many young startups go from being an idea to something more. The fact that some of them may or may not have had discussions that may or may not have been inappropriate is, in the end, a sidenote. In fact, the only reason the discussion is interesting is because of how important angel investors have become to the startup ecosystem. → Read More
The unconfirmed and quite confusing BlackBerry 9670 clamshell that we’ve seen around the place has now been approved by the FCC. For those that need a reminder, the 9670 will run BlackBerry OS6, with a 360×400 internal display, and a 240×320 external display. Expect the usual WiFi, Bluetooth, and A/GPS, plus a 5MP camera with autofocus and flash. It looks to be heading to Verizon, Sprint, and US Cellular. We’ll keep you posted with any more details as they arrive. [via Phone News] → Read More
The University of North Texas Health Science Center has looked at traffic data from the Fatality Accident Reporting System and texting data from the FCC and CTIA, and — after some hefty number crunching — has come to the conclusion that texting while driving is responsible for accidents that claimed 16,141 lives during the period of 2001 – 2007.
I don’t think you need me to tell you that this is an alarmingly large number. → Read More
Sony Ericsson clearly like Android, but — despite being absent from WinPho 7′s list of launch partners — Sony Ericsson’s new Chief Technology Officer, Jan Uddenfeldt, today confirmed that Windows Phone 7 is, indeed, on their product roadmap.
Symbian, however, is not. → Read More
Looking for a Covenant Energy sword to hang on the wall of your man cave? Well, better hurry. The formerly $99 stainless steel stabby thing has been reduced to $44, and as a result there’s only three left in their inventory at Amazon.com. It even includes a wooden wall plaque to hang it from. [via Destructoid] → Read More
A few months ago, Sarah wrote about group-buying travel site Jetsetter.com, arguing that it solves a ‘big problem’ in hotel booking. After the post went live, she received plenty of feedback suggesting other sites to look at, but one came up time and time again: Oyster.com.
Founded in 2008 by Elie Seidman and Ariel Charytan, Oyster is – essentially – a curated version of Trip Advisor. Focusing on Hotels in major US cities, Oyster sends real-life reviewers to each property in the hope that users will come to trust a professional editorial voice over the crowd-sourced opinions of user-generated rivals.
Now the NY-based company is about to start raising a series B round. We invited Seidman to join us on this week’s episode of ‘Why Is This News?’ to explain what the funding is going to be used for, and also to defend a costly editorial operation in a market where user generated views are king.
(After which we spent five minutes discussing room service)
Video below. → Read More
If you’ve been troubled by the tensions between Google and Apple, afraid that Google might pull a jack move and yank its services from iPhones, worry not. The companies are clearly necessary enough to one another that such extreme measures likely won’t take place for a long time. Eric Schmidt, in a recent interview, said that not only have Apple and Google “extended” their search agreement, but that Google doesn’t consider Apple a competitor. → Read More
Big day for the robots today! First we give them custody of our elders during their most vulnerable moment (shampooing), and now we’re teaching them rudimentary combat skills. → Read More
Buried in the San Francisco Chronicle’s story about Zynga’s massive new office space is this little nugget:
The Zynga deal occurs as significant portions of South of Market are filling up with biotechnology and other new media companies, like technology blog TechCrunch, video-streaming site MetaCafe and microblogging service Twitter Inc.
The latter is on the hunt for another 200,000 square feet…
Well here’s a nice feather in their cap! They’ve worked out a deal with NBC Universal whereby Netflix will not only have access to every Saturday Night Live season from the last 35 years, but will have day-after watching for every episode that airs through 2012, after which the contract will be be rendered moot by the end of the world. Go watch already! What are you waiting for — more cowbell? → Read More
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