My Dad has been in the hospital this week and I’ve been going through some of the things in his/our/my family’s garage. Said garage is a mess and we pulled out about 500 pounds of junk that we hauled to the dump and threw away, marking an ignominious end to a lot of projects I started back around eighth and ninth grade out there. However, there was one project that worked – and worked well. One afternoon I went over to my buddy Mike’s house (He called himself DamageInc on the BBSes in Columbus, if that tells you anything about him) and he showed me a project he was working on. It was a shoulder mounted rocket launcher. His used a small PVC tube connected to a box and he built an Estes rocket with a freaking broadhead arrowhead on the tip. Obviously his model was a bit dangerous, especially considering he was using higher-powered rockets, but I was smitten. I had to make one. I don’t think he ever shot his, but it was pretty impressive. → Read More
Turkish courts have famously banned video sharing juggernaut YouTube several times since March 2007. The site still isn’t accessible, despite the fact that Turkey’s president Abdullah Gül used his Twitter account last June to express disapproval of the country’s blocking of YouTube. Gül at the time said he had instructed officials to find legal ways of allowing access.
But now we’re getting multiple tips about Turkey imposing a new ban on video sharing site Vimeo (an IAC company), and chatter on Twitter suggests this is in fact the case – see #censorshipinturkey and #vimeo for more. → Read More
Journalist Monty Munford is the only other person I know who seems to just roam the planet on a whim, finding interesting things in somewhat random countries. (Appropriately, I met him at a cricket game in Mumbai. I was researching my book on entrepreneurship around the world and he was just wrapping his latest Bollywood film.)
A few weeks ago he wrote a post for us about Somaliland using mobile and wire services to become a cashless society. Yesterday, he sent me a note from Helsinki. As far as I can tell he flew there just to get an Angry Birds toy for his kid. He did a little reporting for us on the phenomenon while he was there. Reminds me of the early days of Facebook when a young Mark Zuckerberg had “It’s CEO, Bitch” business cards and supreme confidence he could take over the world. He kinda turned out to be right. Will Rovio’s Mighty Eagle Peter Vesterbacka? → Read More
Yesterday, we showed you “Little Seiko”, a pretty awesome unicycling mini humanoid developed by Japan-based Murata. As reported, the new version (the first model appeared 5 years ago) boasts the ability to traverse an S-shaped balance beam without falling over. But yesterday, we could show you just a picture and no video – now we can. → Read More
By now you probably know the format: Bring together entrepreneurs, designers and developers, put them in teams, and in a caffeine-fueled frantic 48 hours they’re charged with creating a potential new Internet startup each, from the initial pitch to a working prototype. Some, if not all, of which will then go on to become actual long term businesses. At least that’s the idea.
The latest Launch48 Weekend, sponsored by PayPal and Yahoo, took place last weekend at PayPal’s London HQ, producing four startup ideas, my favourite of which is probably MatchFounders, a sort of online dating site for entrepreneurs, without the dating bit. Never sleep with your co-founder, remember, unless it’s for charity.
Read on for full details of all four. → Read More
Much love has been thrown in Google Chrome’s direction of late, not least of which because, well, it’s quite snappy. But let’s not forget the trailblazing browser that helped open the door for all these non-Internet Explorer browsers: Firefox! Yes, Mozilla is closing in on version 4.0 (I’ve been running the betas for some time now, and I’m a fan of the new Mac interface, while the Windows one looks sorta weird in Aero), and now Mac users have a rather specific reason to be excited: hardware acceleration. → Read More
At TechCrunch Disrupt, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt told the audience that the next step for Google Search is to show more personalized results. It’s unclear when Google will roll out a more personalized search experience, but startup Evernote, the ‘memory enhancement’ service that allows one to capture, organize, and find information across multiple devices and platforms, is hoping to bring this to you now. The startup is releasing a new Google Chrome Extension that includes Simultaneous Search, which lets you search both Google and your Evernote account at the same time.
Here’s how it works. When you beginning typing your Google search, your Evernote notes will also show as a result on top of your Google search result. Evernote will also show you the number of notes that match your query; and you can click on the result to see a list of all your notes that matched the search. Evernote says the extension also works on other Google search portals, including Google Images and Google Shopping. And the startup is planning to expand this functionality to other search engines and browsers. → Read More
Total number of internal TechCrunch meetings in the five years prior to AOL Acquisition: 1
I’m not even sure our AOL acquisition has legally closed yet. But today we celebrate our new corporate overlords with…an internal all hands. EVP David Eun, Heather’s new boss, scheduled a whopping 3.5 hour all hands meeting today starting at 11. Everyone’s here in the office pretending like it’s perfectly normal to be awake and in the office at this ridiculous hour. And God help us if news breaks, because we’ll all be in the conference room acting out a Dilbert cartoon.
I really don’t like internal meetings, even if they do serve a purpose. We once had an all hands here at TechCrunch but it ended after a few minutes because I wanted to go back to my office and do anything else besides be in a meeting. I really hope this doesn’t become a regular thing.
Ok, I’m off to go review HR policies, or something. → Read More
Your do-nothing Congress is doing nothing—shock! Lawmakers have adjourned their latest session in order to return to their home districts in order to campaign for the upcoming election. Boring, I know. One of the things they left on the table? Net Neutrality legislation. Thanks, Congress! → Read More
Another day, another new 3D TV announcement. This time, it’s two new models coming [press release in English] from Sharp Japan, the 46-inch LC-46LB3 and the 52-inch LC-52LB3. The TVs of the AQUOS Quattron series feature a built-in Blu-ray recorder, which are 3D-enabled, too. → Read More
comScore just released its latest online video data in the U.S. for the month of August; showing that viewership remained steady since the previous month. According to comScore, 178 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in August for an average of 14.3 hours per viewer (178 million users watched online video in July as well). The total U.S. Internet audience engaged in more than 5.2 billion viewing sessions during the course of the month and 85.1 percent of internet users in the U.S. viewed online video in August
Unsurprisingly, YouTube.com took the stop spot in terms of viewers, with 146.3 million unique viewers. Facebook.com jumped one position to capture the #2 spot with 58.6 million viewers, for a total of 243 million viewing sessions, continuing on its growth in video viewership and surpassing Yahoo. Yahoo came in third with 53.9 million viewers, followed by VEVO with 45.4 million. Google Sites in total had the highest number of overall viewing sessions with 1.9 billion and average time spent per viewer at 270 minutes, or 4.5 hours. → Read More
Most flash drives have a lanyard thing but the drives themselves aren’t exactly designed for keychains. They’re cheap plastic and so one. Enter the Super Talent CKB. This flash drive is made out of metal and designed to look like a key. Sure, they’re not exactly novel as the Lacie released iamaKey last year, but still, the form factor is solid and there should be more like these. No word on pricing just yet, but they’re probably not going to be crazy expensive. → Read More
In the game or Risk, the main objective is to take control over every land mass on the planet. With an update to Street View today, Google has just completed that.
The original idea behind Google Street View was a good one: give everyone in the world a view from any street in the world. Of course, when it launched in May 2007, Street View was only available in five cities in the U.S. But the update today — over three years later — completes an impressive feat for the product: it’s now available on every continent. Yes, all seven. Yes, that includes Antarctica. Yes, a place with no real streets. → Read More
Buzzd, a social city and nightlife mobile app that pulls its data from Twitter and other buzzd users for a bigger picture of the places that are hot in a given location, is debuting a new Android app today. The app will aggregate check-ins from Gowalla, Foursquare, Facebook, Loopt, Brightkite and Buzzd itself to give users a realtime view of the most popular venues in their areas.
The buzzd network compiles information from its base of over a half-million active users and other real-time sources to provide users with activity updates for almost half a million venues across the United States, the U.K. and Canada. The Android app now aggregates over 500,000 check-ins per day from Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Loopt, Yelp, Whrrl and other real-time location -based services sources to present activity at bars, clubs, restaurants and other points of interest. That data is then added to the app’s “buzzdmeter,” which gives you a real-time measure of activity at popular bars, restaurants and nightclubs in your city. → Read More
After debuted the latest in a series of wacky stunts, dating service and scholarship fund Grouspawn, I caught up with Groupon CEO Andrew Mason backstage at TechCrunch Disrupt to talk about the recent Groupon backlash, the company’s success problem and how transparency can scale to hundreds of millions of dollars in deals in 150 cities around the world. → Read More
E-commerce platform eSellerPro has raised £2m from Notion Capital. It says it will use the new funds to invest in sales, marketing and customer service to “further drive and support huge demand” across the UK, European and U.S. markets, which has already seen the company processes more than £150m in annual sales.
For Notion Capital, which invests in early to mid-stage Internet-based startups, it represents the 8th fund investment since being founded in late 2009. → Read More
WAZZZUP! We are totally raging this weekend. We are going to Sharkey’s first and then Paul is having a hot tub party with you know who. Yeah! Her and like fifty of her friends! Broseph! I know! Aw man, I went totally speed skating yesterday. Yeah, dude, I wear a unitard and get up to like 40 miles an hour. Naw, I’m in training for the championships in Hawaii. Naw. That’s just something I do. I’m totally in it to win it. What? This thing? Duuuuuude. This is the new Jawbone thing from Cisco. Like it’s totally connected to the phone system. Oh man. Someone’s calling. → Read More
Ah, beer. You’re my solace and my comfort in these trying times and I love you. But how do I find you, especially the odd and unique members of your extended family? Thankfully, there now exists BeerBy. → Read More
Internet marketing services company eBridge has raised $2.5 million in financing from Comerica Bank in a bid to broaden the scope of SMB-focused tools and services currently offered through its local business division, eBridgeInteractive.
eBridge has been in operation since 2003, using technology and a service-oriented approach to help small and medium-sized businesses maximize their visibility on the Web. → Read More
