The iPhone is great for gaming… in some ways. The App Store as a distribution model? Fantastic. The finely-tuned development platform? Amazing! The lack of even a single physical face button beyond the one that exits the application? Ehhh, not so great.
While most game developers have learned to make do in this frightfully buttonless world, there are some ideas that simply require buttons. This has lead to a rather staggering number of games that draw their controls onto the touchscreen — which, for anyone who witnessed the control pad’s evolution from the palm-destroying corners of the NES to the pampering curves of today’s consoles, is a fairly terrifying idea. Playing a fighter game on a slab of tactility-free glass? No thanks.
Enter Joystickers’ Classics — they’re removable, reusable, arcade-style buttons built to give the iPhone (or just about any touchscreen device) that little bit of extra game. → Read More
Little Magic Stories from Chris O'Shea on Vimeo. Chris O’Shea makes great stuff using a hacked Kinect. This latest experiment is a performance system called Little Magic Stories. It uses a Kinect sensor and a glass screen to create a “Pepper’s Ghost” illusion. Kids can create and animate their own little characters and then interact with them, catching eggs, smacking bugs, and running wild on stage. → Read More
It isn’t often that you hear about a startup that’s remained in stealth through multiple multi-million funding rounds. But today, we’re meeting a company called Transphorm that’s done just that — and it’s making its debut in style. The company has just closed a $20 million Series C funding round led by Google Ventures, with participation from existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Foundation Capital, and Lux Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to $38 million since it was founded in 2007.
So what exactly does Transphorm do? The startup is focused on improving energy efficiency, namely in making power conversion less wasteful. CEO Umesh Mishra says that right now, we lose around 10% of the total electricity in the United States to energy conversions — when energy is converted from one form to another. If we could conserve and use that energy, he says we’d be saving more energy than is conserved by alternative sources like wind and solar (see chart). This would lead to billions of dollars in energy savings (the company estimates $40 billion a year in the US alone) and it’s obviously better for the environment, too. → Read More
Southwest Airlines, of Kevin Smith fame, has partnered with Apple to create an in-flight entertainment download store called InAirtainment. Users would connect to the Internet via in-flight Wi-Fi, then download music, movies, and TV shows. Southwest gets a small percentage of the fee. → Read More
Just Monday we were writing about Breakup Notifier, a Facebook app that raked in 100,000 users in less than 24 hours and as of 5 hours ago had a more than modest 3,673,484 users in its database … And then poof! It’s gone, blocked by Facebook.
To the uninitiated, Breakup Notifier sent you a helpful email notifying you whenever the object of your stalking affection changed their relationship status. It’s seems like Facebook has been on a cool app shutdown kick lately, also blocking the Dutch anti-smoking app Blackmail Yourself yesterday. → Read More
Are you ready for some excitement this fine morning? Apple has something special for you if you recently purchased a 6th gen Nano. What is it? I won’t tell until you click through!
Aw, heck, I’ll just tell you.
With iPod software update version 1.1 for iPod nano (6th generation), you will be able to:
Completely turn off the iPod, rather than just put the device to sleep.
Control music or radio playback using the Sleep/Wake button without having to look at the device.
Here’s hoping that Battlefield 3 gets big enough to make proper use of its massive 64 player maps, but not so big that it attracts the MW2 team deathmatch idiots. → Read More
I’m not sure exactly how easy (or difficult) it is to come by stuff like this, but I for one thought it was pretty cool.
Eli Feldblum and Mayer Reich, co-founders of RankAbove, emailed me a number of documents this morning that Facebook used to send potential advertisers back when they were just getting started (and when the fledgling company was still called TheFacebook).
The docs were originally sent to Feldblum by Kevin Colleran – the longest employee at Facebook other than founder Mark Zuckerberg – who still works there as Global Sales Lead, after they had met at a digital marketing conference. The date: Thursday, May 19, 2005. → Read More
The 3D craze we’re currently witnessing isn’t limited to the home electronics market and movie theaters, it seems: Sega Toys in Japan announced [JP] the so-called 3D Spray Art Pro, a toy that makes it possible to spray “graffiti” on paper, which can then be viewed in 3D. → Read More
Remember Archos? With all this talk of Droids v. iStuff, Archos’ stable and handsome PMP/Tablet line has been cast by the wayside, relegated to a distant third place where it commiserates daily with Creative and the Zune. However in many markets Archos is still a leader and now they have the financials to prove it. According to a recent release, Archos hit 83 million Euro in revenue compared to 59 in 2009. Most of the revenue came from Europe with 116.2% growth and, surprisingly, an over two-fold increase in revenue in America. → Read More
While I already praised the new Royal Oak Offshore as a fantastic piece for 2011, I don’t have any choice but to also give Audemars Piguet the right to call their new Jules Audemars Tourbillon Grande Date limited edition watch, the best tourbillon timepiece debuted at SIHH 2011. Why? I love the straight forward execution and emphasis on the tourbillon that has a view straight through the watch. The Jules Audemars platform makes for an elegant looking timepiece that is formal looking without being boring, and is thin, without trying to be an “ultra thin watch.” The dial is easy to read, and has an interesting looking stack of elements. From the top you have the AP logo, then the big (Grande) date indicator, then the point where the hands connect, and then the tourbillon with subsidiary seconds hand. These element form a nice stack and allow the dial to be almost perfectly symmetrical. → Read More
There’s an age-old debate in Silicon Valley over whether or not you have to have started a company before to be a great VC. While many of the best VCs in Valley history weren’t entrepreneurs, the bias is heavily on investors who know firsthand what entrepreneurs are going through. But what about VCs who are building companies at the same time they are backing them?
It’s a growing trend as serial entrepreneurs want to invest, but not go quite all the way over to the dark side. There have always been angel investors who dabble in deals while they keep their day jobs, but being a partner at an institutional venture fund while doing what’s considered more than a full time job of building a company is something new. And it’s interesting that this is happening as most prominent angels are making being an angel their only job. We’re definitely in a period of redefining all the normal venture capital rules and roles.
But are there inherent conflicts entrepreneurs should be aware of? One of the more successful at this balancing act is Tony Conrad of True Ventures. He was hanging around TechCrunch yesterday, so we decided to grill him on how doing two more than full time jobs well is humanly possible. → Read More
StackOverflow co-founders Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood know their audience. The Q&A site popular with programmers is today launching its Careers 2.0 effort at careers.stackoverflow.com, unveiling a complete revamp of the “dinky careers site” that was there before.
The new site is replete with fleshed out search interface (below), which lets employers search the StackOverflow programmer database by skills and location among other things. Prospective employers can also see the number of “active” candidates (people actively searching for jobs) vs. “passive” (people who would consider job offers if good enough) as well as include students or limit searches to people who have a legal right to work in the United States. → Read More
Apple rumors are flying left and right, but the latest might just be the wildest of them all. This rumor states the upcoming MacBook Pro models will feature Intel’s Light Peak high speed data connectivity port under the Apple label as Thunderbolt High Speed I/O. Nevermind that Apple rarely (I can’t name one) debuts an unproven industry technology, this port is said to share a connector with the Mini Displayport. There’s even a photo circulating claiming to be the connector in question, complete with a little lighting bolt next to said port.
The rumor started yesterday with an Intel statement talking about an announcement next Thursday, which happens to be the same day as the rumored Apple event, about “a new technology that is about to appear on the market”. Then a German site, fsklog, posted what’s reportedly a spec sheet for the upcoming 13-inch MacBook Pro. Along with a new dual-core Intel Core i5 CPU with integrated graphics is mention of Thunderbolt. MacRumors then got what seems to be the same exact spec sheet just in English and it also mentions it. It states “Thunderbolt port supports high-speed I/O and Mini DisplayPort devices.” → Read More
Boom! One way or another, word of a March 2nd Apple event trickled out yesterday morning — and sure enough, the invite just hit my inbox. Apple’s straying from their generally coy approach with this invite. There are no mysterious curtains or cryptic guitars for people to spend hours poring over in Photoshop here — they straight up put a picture of an iPad right on the invite, right behind a big ol’ number “2″. The event will take place in San Francisco on March 2nd at 10 A.M. Pacific. We will, of course, be there live, bringing back every juicy detail at a breakneck pace. → Read More
A Raleigh, North Carolina-based maker of thermoelectric coolers and generators, Phononic Devices, closed a $10 million series B investment from Venrock and Oak Investment Partners, the companies revealed today.
Often explained as “solid-state heat pumps,” thermoelectric technology (a.k.a. thermoelectrics) can capture wasted heat, and convert it into power. They can also displace heat and maintain a cool temperature in everything from laptops to refrigerators and lasers. The technology provides an environmental benefit versus compression-based refrigeration and other power generating technologies, because thermoelectric modules don’t use toxic coolants or burn fossil fuels, and generate no noise. They have no moving parts… → Read More
PCH International isn’t your normal Chinese manufacturing company. They’re located in Shenzhen, a sleepy fishing village in the 1970′s that is now home to 9 million people. It’s an Irish company, headquartered in Cork, Ireland. And to make things even more interesting, it was named after the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH), in California. Founder Liam Casey has been dubbed “Mr. China” – as a Westerner he has a competitive advantage in dealing with U.S. and European brands trying to figure out how to make stuff in China.
The company designs, produces and packages electronics and accessories in partnership with major gadget brands. Revenue has skyrocketed, from next to nothing a few years ago to $400 million last year. And they are extremely profitable, says Casey. If you’re a gadget freak, there’s a good chance something they’ve made is in your pocket or on your desk.
PCH is backed by U.S. venture capitalists. They raised $21 million in 2008 from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and Focus Ventures. → Read More
Exclusive - Grey Area, a small Finnish smartphone games developer, has raised $2.5 million in Series A funding from Index Ventures, London Venture Partners and Initial Capital, TechCrunch has learned.
The startup is behind a mobile alternative reality game called Shadow Cities, which is a pretty fascinating location-based MMORPG that essentially turns the place you live into a full-fledged game scene. → Read More
Search and online advertising juggernaut Google announced a couple of months ago that it would be providing some $5 million in grants to non-profit organizations devoted to innovating journalism.
Around 40% of the total fund was recently allocated to the Knight Foundation in the United States.
It appears more than 50% of the fund has just been awarded to the International Press Institute, based in Vienna, which will be used to sponsor the IPI News Innovation Contest. → Read More
College textbook rental startup BookRenter has raised $40 million in funding from Adams Capital Management, Comerica Bank, Focus Ventures, Lighthouse Capital Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, and Storm Ventures. This brings BookRenter’s total funding to $60 million.
Similar to Chegg, Bookrenter wants to be the Netflix of textbook rentals. By renting textbooks, Students are able to save money by loaning textbooks for a fixed duration, usually a semester, and end up spending only the fraction of the cost of outright purchases. The system is simple: a student searches for a book (BookRenter now has 5.5 million titles) on the website using a title or ISBN, and places an order by selecting a rental period and delivery option. The book(s) are delivered complete with return UPS labels for easy shipping. And through BookRenter’s RapidReturns service, students can return their rented textbooks at participating college stores, who benefit from increased buyback activity and merchandise transactions. → Read More
