Do you remember the embarrassingly ugly and uncool Chinese copy of the awesome Gundam statue Bandai erected in Tokyo and later in Shizuoka? The rip-off caused such a splash that mass media in Japan (and the world) started reporting about it, which then made the Chinese theme park responsible remove their statue for a while. → Read More
Google’s Q4 lobbying spend is in; and the search giant continues to spend more money on influencing policy and lawmakers than in previous years. In the fourth quarter of 2010, Google spent $1.24 million on lobbying, which is up from $1.12 million in the same quarter in 2010. In total, Google spent $5.16 million on lobbying efforts in 2010, which is up from $4 million in 2009. You can find the reports from the U.S. Senate’s lobbying database here.
For Google, this quarter’s lobbying efforts were slightly higher than Q3′s spending ($1.2 million) but lower than Q2′s lobbying bill ($1.34 million), and Q1′s spend ($1.38 million). In the fourth quarter of 2010, Google’s lobbying strategy for this quarter focused on online advertising regulation including privacy and competition issues, patent reform, cyber security and online privacy, renewable energy, freedom of expression and censorship, tax reform, free trade, Congressional Internet service usage rules and broadband access. → Read More
This latest iPhone 5 rumor seems to have come completely out of left field, but that’s partially what makes it exciting. How does a 3D screen grab you? Do you respond with “Oh, wow, awesome!” or is it more along the lines of “Er, what?” No answer is wrong. → Read More
A quick “this exists” for your Monday morning. It’s a Nintendo 3DS Starter Kit, from Icon. The $20 kit contains a number of items to make your 3DS-ing all the more pleasurable come March 27 when the system is released. Rumor has it you’ll find a copy of Fernando Torres’ transfer request in there! (No you won’t.) → Read More
Note from the editor: This is a guest post from Aneesh Chopra, United States Chief Technology Officer.
During last week’s State of the Union address, President Obama challenged the Nation to out-educate, out-innovate, and out-build our competition to win the future.
A critical ingredient in this endeavor is the creative spirit of the American entrepreneur that featured prominently in the President’s Strategy for American Innovation – a framework for long-term economic growth and sustainable job creation.
Today, President Obama celebrated the launch of Startup America, a national (public/private) campaign to celebrate, inspire, and accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship across all corners of the country, and the formation of the Startup America Partnership to catalyze private support for entrepreneurial ecosystems. → Read More
Sure you can build little houses and stuff with Lego, but can you build a sniper rifle? Lego for Adults author Martin Martin Hüdepohl wants to show you how in his book Badass Lego Guns. This video teaser shows some of the amazing shooting creations that actually work and are made entirely of LEGO Technic parts. → Read More
In the same events planning space as Plancast and Upcoming, Y Combinator-funded Lanyrd launches today after this weekend’s game changing news of Yuri Milner and SV Angel’s 150K investment in every Y Combinator startup. An IMDB for conferences, Lanyrd has the ambitious goal of becoming the one stop shop for all conference data by pulling in information from the Twitter accounts that you follow.
At first glance Lanyrd is pretty comprehensive. Whether past or future event, a Lanyrd conference page shows you a list of speakers, attendees, and trackers and their respective Twitter accounts as well as a list of sessions, a link to the actual conference page itself, the ability to save the event to iCal and Outlook, a link to coverage, separation by topic, related books, as well as permalink page which enables you to share the Lanyrd conference page with your friends (Whew!). → Read More
I’ve talked to a dozen startups in the last month who are trying again to crack the tricky problem of reducing who you are personally and professionally to a reputation score that can’t be gamed and isn’t just a outlet for trolls and haters. I’m not convinced it can be done, as I argued with Klout’s Joe Fernandez, and beyond that I’m not convinced it should be done. Social media has already given plenty of people an unhealthy obsession with measuring their self-worth in friends, followers and retweets. Anyone who faces a mob of angry commenters for every word they blog knows the truth: The Internet is too big to take even a large number of haters too seriously. Even hundreds of comments saying “YOUR AN IDITO!” are still just a tiny angry minority, who just wants to be heard.
But there are some instances where getting closer to capturing reputation online could help solve real world problems, and most are in the professional sphere. After all, I don’t have to care what a guy on the street thinks about me, but if that guy on the street is friends with the hiring manager for my dream job, suddenly his opinion becomes hugely relevant to my life. The workplace is the one place where people’s opinions of you actually matter. I’m actually writing about two new companies today that I think get closer to solving this problem than LinkedIn has, and might be worth the foray into the seedy world of inviting your peers to judge you. The first is Mixtent. → Read More
Say, for example, you’re a self-styled office despot. Grown men fear you, women are in awe of your power, and children cower at your feet (all of this is in your head and your co-workers actually hate you, but pay that no mind). What can you do to add that delicate touch of insanity to your already vicious reign? Desk mounted ordnance, that’s what. That’s where the $39 Brando USB Thunder Missile Launcher comes in. Sadly, these little missiles carry no payload except your dignity but they do add some wild audio effects to your already insane sense of self worth. Not only are you a god, you are also annoyingly armed. → Read More
Power-One, Inc. (NASDAQ:PWER) — a large manufacturer of power inverters for the renewable energy industry and provider of software to manage power harvesting and distribution — opened its first North American manufacturing facility in Phoenix today, where they plan to employ 350 people full-time.
According to a company press statement, the facility will primarily produce photovoltaic and wind inverters that convert renewable energy into a usable form of electricity for distribution on the utility grid. The chief executive of Power-One, Richard J. Thompson, explained ahead of the facility’s opening ceremony on Monday… → Read More
Digital publishing company LibreDigital (formerly known as NewsStand, Inc.) has secured $4 million in debt funding, the company announced this morning (an SEC filing shows they had recently raised $1.3 million for the round).
LibreDigital last raised money back in May 2010, securing $8 million in funding – its total now stands at roughly $31 million. → Read More
What’s the first thing you think when you hear the word “focus.” You might respond, “camera,” or “cheap car,” or “concentration,” but definitely not, “fun,” “technological,” or “practical.” This will likely change in a second because those are the words I’d use to tentatively describe this year’s Ford Focus, a small, sporty car for just about everybody. More Americans are ditching their gas-guzzling SUVs and heading straight for the small car market. From a marketing standpoint, Ford’s approach to selling a small car to people is by offering all the features found in their larger vehicles, but in a smaller package. No longer do people have to feel ashamed for “cheaping out” and getting a Focus, instead, it’s simply a lifestyle choice. Why should the choice take out all the fun of owning a car? I got a chance to drive the new 2012 Ford Focus last week in LA. Those in the area know the hills overtop the city feature some of the most entertaining roads in the country. → Read More
Way back in October 2008, we reported about a cell phone that featured a built-in mini projector. The cell phone was showcased by Japan’s biggest mobile carrier, NTT Docomo, as a prototype. But today, the same carrier announced [JP] that such a spectacular handset will finally go on sale in Japan this Friday. → Read More
ShareThis, which you may be familiar with thanks to all the buttons online publishers worldwide have been plastering on their sites to lure you into spreading their content, is now live at roughly 1 million websites, aggregately reaching more than 400 million users.
The company has now tapped Kristen Fergason, formerly a marketer at Yahoo, as its new CMO to grow even more. In addition to her hiring, ShareThis has named Julie Greenhouse SVP Ad Sales & Business Development and Ben Slutter VP of Revenue and Ad Operations. Both were with the company previously. → Read More
“The problem was that no one wanted to type in the bar they were at,” Adam Cahan told us when we met with him last week to see his latest venture, IntoNow. He wasn’t talking about his startup. Instead, he was talking about Dodgeball, the location-based service that came well before Foursquare. That is, he was describing why Foursquare took off while Dodgeball didn’t, even though they had the same basic concept. GPS being built-in to smartphones changed everything, he said. “Now our industry is in the same place. We’re the GPS layer.”
What industry is that? So so-called media check-in space. (Though don’t use the word “check-in” around Cahan, he hates it.) More specifically, IntoNow is trying to own the tv engagement app space. And while competitors like GetGlue, Miso, TunerFish and others all beat IntoNow to market, they have a secret weapon: it’s called SoundPrint.
Just like GPS with location services, SoundPrint, a new technology created by IntoNow, allows you to automatically “check-in” to watching a show simply by hitting a button in the IntoNow app. How? It reads the sound waves and patterns of each television show (and a growing collection of movies as well) and matches it with a database they keep. Yep, it’s a lot like Soundhound or Shazam, but for video content. → Read More
As part of a White House effort to promote job creation, entrepreneurship and private-sector investment in startups, President Obama is announcing a new initiative today, called Startup America Partnership, to foster growth in the startup world and jumpstart job creation. The Partnership will be chaired by AOL co-founder Steve Case and will be partly funded by the Kauffman Foundation and the Case Foundation.
Startup America’s core goals are “to increase the number of new, high-growth firms that are creating economic growth, innovation, and quality jobs; celebrate and honor entrepreneurship as a core American value and source of competitive advantage; and inspire and empower an ever-greater diversity of communities and individuals to build great American companies.” And the campaign will work with both the White House and a number of technology companies, universities, and entrepreneurs to help achieve these goals. → Read More
Jewelry and watch designer Philippe Tournaire has created some really interesting things. For me, he will be most famous for being the guy who turns architecture into rings. Really. Image a ring with a gold building on it – yup. Tournaire’s newest creation combines this concept with a watch, but in a way that is just sort of weird. In fact, as hard as it may have been someone finally make the beautiful city of Paris kinda unattractive. → Read More
Unirac — a company that makes racks that are used to install and hold solar panels in place within power generating systems of any size — today revealed a new partnership with solar tech manufacturers, Canadian Solar Inc. (nasdaq: CSIQ).
Through the partnership, the companies will install 30 MW of solar projects in Canada, starting with a 10.9 MW solar park in Napanee, Ontario. According to a Unirac press statement, Canadian Solar will serve as the engineering, procurement and construction entity on these projects, and Unirac will provide the racking infrastructure.
In May 2010, Albuquerque, N.M.-based Unirac sold to Hilti Group, a massive construction sector business. Before it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Hilti, Unirac’s sales increased 100% from 2009 to 2010 said the chief executive of Unirac, Doug May… → Read More
TechCrunch exclusive – If you’d never heard about KIT digital before, you will after today. The provider of cloud-based video asset management solutions has acquired not one, not two but three social software and video companies.
The company has acquired New York City-based KickApps, Paris-based Kewego, and San Francisco-based Kyte, for aggregate consideration of approximately $77.2 million.
In conjunction with the acquisitions, KickApps CEO Alex Blum has been appointed to the new position of Global COO of KIT digital, while KickApps CFO David Lapter will assume the role of SVP Finance and Administration within KIT digital. → Read More
I loathe press releases like this one from Ooyala, who I must say is our trusted video platform provider in the interest of full disclosure. I’m singling the company out today, because I’m quite fed up, but this is an honest plea for every company that loves to tout growth without saying anything substantial to, please, stop doing that.
So apparently Ooyala “grew revenue by nearly 200%, its customer base by over 50%, and delivered a record number of video technology innovations”.
Sounds impressive, except the statement says absolutely nothing about its revenues, the size of its customer base or what the company has done to innovate video technology. → Read More
