That is, if they like gifts that are free. Because the newly-on-iPad app from the folks at iFixit definitely is free, and isn’t even ad-supported. It’s leveraging their growing database of repair instructions for cameras, game consoles, mobile phones, and pretty much everything out there. → Read More
It’s almost Christmas, and if your family is anything like mine (I really don’t know how likely that is), there will be mile-high piles of wrapping paper and ribbon by noon on Saturday. We’ve tried to recycle paper and ribbons year-to-year, but there’s always more to be done to make sure your holiday cheer doesn’t take down more of the Amazon than it has to. → Read More
Even though it wasn’t supposed to be released until CES, Dell’s new tablet leaked today via some ad copy, and it turns out the tablet will be called the Streak 7. → Read More
Needed any more sign that Christmas is upon us? The annual Google and North American Aerospace Defense partnership to track Jolly Saint Nick is back in action starting tomorrow at 2:00 am.
Apparently NORAD has been tracking Santa since 1955, hilariously because a telephone misprint in a Sears catalogue misdirected Santa hotline callers to a NORAD higher ups phone line. Google got in on the Santa tracking game in 2004 and partnered up with NORAD in 2007, bringing Google services like Maps, Earth and YouTube into the mix. → Read More
Back in October we wrote about JewelMint, a new subscription jewelry site endorsed by Kate Bosworth and her stylist Cher Coulter. The site represents the first vertical for Santa Monica-based startup BeachMint, and it’s apparently doing well — less than three months after launching, BeachMint just landed a new $10 million round, which comes in addition to the $5 million it raised last summer. The round is being led by Trinity Ventures, with participation from Stanford University and existing investors New Enterprise Associates and Anthem Ventures.
That was fast. BeachMint was only founded in June by Diego Berdakin and MySpace cofounder Josh Berman, both of whom previously headed News Corp’s incubator Slingshot Labs. → Read More
Short version: An attractive and compact pair of headphones, not revolutionary by any means, but powerful and portable, and hey, they say “Marshall” on them. → Read More
Group messaging has been something that has been pretty hot for a while now. In fact, it’s gotten so hot that products from other hot spaces are starting to pivot towards it — see: Brightkite. But despite the hotness, I’ve yet to find one of these apps that really hooks me. But a new entry in the space, Beluga, may just be my elusive white whale.
As first covered yesterday by blogger Louis Gray, Beluga is a service with a good pedigree. The three people behind it, Lucy Zhang, Ben Davenport, and Jon Perlow, are all Xooglers (ex-Googlers). What they’ve built is a simple, elegant, and fast group messaging service.
The key may be that it works across several different platforms: iPhone, Android, mobile web, regular web, and text message. But whereas most group messaging apps seem to focus on the lowest common denominator, SMS, Beluga puts the focus on the native iPhone and Android apps. The rest are simply fallback options. And across all the platforms, they’ve able to keep the experience consistent. → Read More
Short Version: The Roland R-05 is a pocket recorder for professionals and semi-pros looking to record voice and/or music live. It’s a far sight better than any smartphone recorder and the feature set, including effects, speed changers, and rudimentary editing including song splitting, is strong for a small, compact, $299 recorder. → Read More
Video advertising service Pixelfish has just raised $2.1 million in Series B funding according to a SEC Form D filed today. Combined with a $1.4 million Series A round raised back in February this cash brings the company’s total funding to $3.5 million.
Founder John McIntyre won’t give us specific details on the investors in the round other than to say they include himself, co-founder John Zdanowski and executives from AT&T and Microsoft. Floodgate will also be investing and VC Mike Maples (listed on the Form D) will be joining the Pixelfish board. → Read More
HoverMe, a new browser add-on, is launching to add contextual social information about who you follow on the new version of Twitter. After you install the add-on, which works with Firefox, Chrome, and IE, when you hold your mouse or cursor over someone’s name on Twitter.com, it brings up a window that shows links to that person’s profiles on other social networks and media sites.
For example, If I hover over my colleague Alexia Tsotsis’ name in my Twitter stream, I’ll be able togo straight to her Facebook, Foursquare, PlanCast, and FriendFeed accounts via the hovercard. HoverMe pulls in all this information via an API from Qwerly which pulls any profiles that can be found publicly in a Google or Bing search, including LinkedIn, Flickr and more. → Read More
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about Travis Kiefer, a kid who worked brutally hard to get into Stanford, took time off to build a non-profit called Gumball Capital, and decided to raise money by running a marathon on every continent. It was one of the more passed around posts I’ve ever written with more than 1,200 Facebook “likes,” 800 retweets and RTing this actually made my username a national trending topic on Twitter for a brief period.
More important, TechCrunch readers donated more than $10,000 to Kiefer’s nonprofit. The deal was Kiefer would do something crazy for each $27 donation. Since he was going to be in Antarctica for a week, he figured he’d have plenty of time. And then he got stuck in Chile for three days. Oops.
I caught up with Kiefer from my parents house in Memphis and his parents house in South Dakota to hear how it all went. If for no other reason, watch this to see how much he looks like Kenneth from 30 Rock. → Read More
The new Net Neutrality rules put off most of the hard questions—but who does that help and hurt?
When government faces a tough decision, it has three options: “Aye,” “Nay,” or “Kay”—“Kick the Can.” Postponement is attractive, and the Obama administration’s 2010 Net Neutrality rule has transformed can-kicking, the traditional domain of small children, into an art form. In its rule the FCC has successfully put off almost all of the hard Net Neutrality questions that have been buzzing around since 2000 or so. It is a remarkable feat to write a rule that actually creates more uncertainty than no rule, but by golly, the agency has done it.
If you’re the type that prizes certainty and clarity (i.e., most engineers, business people and investors), then manufacturing confusion may sound like insanity. But welcome to law school: good lawyers know that uncertainty has a power all of its own. So to really understand the Net Neutrality rule is not to bother understanding the rule itself, but rather the effects the uncertainty will create over the next 5 years or so.
In simple win/lose terms, the effects are good news for the wireless (Verizon / AT&T) and Internet app (Google / Skype) companies, and, as we’ll see, something of a defeat for the cable industry. For users, the consequences are mixed. What you’ll probably notice most clearly is a sense of a growing gap between the wireline and wireless internet. The reason is that the whatever the wireless rules do (which is, of course, uncertain), they’ll have only a marginal effect on the practices in that industry. → Read More
OK, this is great. It’s a “real life” version of Call of Duty, complete with a guy running around in an old Andriy Shevchenko shirt. Oh, how I laughed! → Read More
After you’ve made a series of iOS App Store hits like I Am T-Pain, Glee Karaoke, Leaf Trombone, and Magic Fiddle, what do you do next to further bolster that yearly revenue? You could make another iPhone app, sure — or you could follow in the footsteps of countless mimes, jugglers, dudes-painted-to-look-like-robots and breakdancers before you, and turn to the streets. So that’s what Smule did. Lookin’ to bring in some extra cash for their Q4 reports (read: looking to have some fun and spread some Holiday cheer), they set out on tour, iPads Magic Fiddles in hand. Two stops later, they were rolling deep in over one dollar and fourty five cents (none of which, as our friends at Smule point out, do they have to share with Apple.) Take that, Bushman! Happy Holidays, folks. → Read More
Oh, dear. Microsoft has revealed a new security flaw in Internet Explorer that, if taken advantage of, could let evildoers take over your computer. That’s nice. The good news is that Microsoft hasn’t heard of any consumer attacks brought about as a result of the glitch, so there’s no reason to freak out just yet. → Read More
Tremor Media, a New York-based online video monetization and advertising company, recently acquired streaming ad placement service provider ScanScout for an undisclosed sum. Now, thanks to this SEC filing, we know they spent at least $65 million on the merger.
If the transaction was all stock, that’s the purchase price. If the agreement also included partial payment in cash, that means the purchase price was actually higher that that. → Read More
Although the press release is gloriously ridiculous, the watch is pretty cool. RJ, maker of the Titanic watch, styled this piece on the Steampunk Meme of 2010. The watch is “steampunk” because it has little pistons, gears, and odd numerals on an otherwise bog-standard timepiece. No price, but production is limited to 2,012 pieces. → Read More
Around twenty miles south of San Francisco is a small city called San Carlos. Despite living in the Bay Area for two decades I know almost nothing about it (Wikipedia says it’s an affluent small residential suburb) but starting today, it’s special for at least one big reason: it’s home to the largest Nexus S in existence.
Last night, Google employees installed a giant Nexus S in the San Carlos Best Buy, sporting a 42 inch touchscreen, a working camera, and internet connectivity. Yes, unlike the giant Nexus Ones that Google produced last year, which just played a looping video of the UI, this giant Nexus S actually works. And it’s actually being powered by a real (smaller) Nexus S that’s been equipped with special video-out capabilities. → Read More
I present to you, friends, unadulterated, the horrors witnessed by French journalist Jordan Pouille and recorded in his video, “Inside the Foxconn Prison,” are truly manifold. In what will soon be the The Jungle of its day, Pouille’s video of Chinese factory workers living their oppressed lives while shopping for food, listening to pop music, and meeting for lunch reminds us that jobs suck everywhere and that factory jobs suck the most. → Read More
Smith Electric Vehicles U.S. (SEV) and the Tanfield Group announced today that the American maker of all-electric trucks will purchase its United Kingdom-based parent company, Smith Electric Vehicles U.K. for $15 million in January.
The company began its U.S. operations in Kansas City, Mo. in 2009. Led by chief executive Bryan Hansel, SEV is buying all of the assets and operating business of Smith Electric Vehicles U.K. and renaming its business there Smith Electric Vehicles Europe to reflect an imminent expansion.
The company is eyeing Germany and France, countries whose governments have embraced renewable energy and electric vehicles… → Read More
