As anyone who’s been reading MobileCrunch for a while knows, I refer to the rumor mill in just about every other post. Usually it’s when I’m decrying the rumor mill as a cruel, cruel vixen, hell bent on crushing our spirits by setting our hopes on itty-bitty candy-powered iPhones, only to smack us in the face with silly things like logic, feasibility, and whats-actually-happening. Sometimes, I worry that new readers won’t know what the rumor mill is. Will they think it’s a real place? Will they try to go to there? Fortunately, I can now just send them to the Oxford Friggin’ Dictionary, which added the term to its catalog today. → Read More
I love Kickstarter. It’s maybe the best enabler site ever. In the short time it has been around, we’ve gotten everything from open source Facebook “killers” to iPod nano watches to RoboCop Statues. But one of the aspects of the service with the most potential is movie funding. A few of these projects have popped up already, and it apparently caught the eye of Napoleon Dynamite himself, Jon Heder.
As NewTeeVee points out today, Heder has set up a project on the service to get funding for a movie he hopes to make. Alongside collaborator Nick Peterson (who would direct the film), he hopes to raise $27,000 over the next month or so. Given the fact that he’s well, Napoleon Dynamite, he should blow past that in no time. I mean, the iPod nano watch got almost a million in funding. → Read More
Unless you’re the hack-it-yourself type, a lucky blogger type, or the super-early-adopter type, chances are pretty good that you don’t have an Android 3.0 device just yet. But when that day comes, you’re going to need to transfer files back and forth — and if you’ve got a Mac, things aren’t going to be quite as straightforward as they were on pre-Android 3.0 devices. Whereas simply plugging in the USB cable was once all you’d need, Mac users will now need this here File Transfer utility. Windows users should be a-okay out of the box. That step has managed to confuse just about everyone we know who’s acquired a 3.0-device so far (read the manual? LOL! NERD ALERT!), so consider this a little future-proofing PSA. → Read More
This week, Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. (ACS) — which was acquired by Xerox (NYSE: XRX) in February 2010 — announced that it’s building a new, electronic toll system on the two busiest highways in Los Angeles, to allow all single car drivers, even those in a diesel guzzling Hummer, to shift into carpool lanes for a fee.
When average traffic levels in a carpool lane rise overall, so will the fee. The company and city plan to calibrate the systems to keep traffic at a steady 45 miles per hour in the carpool lane (at least). Once equipped with the new toll system, the carpool lanes along Interstate 10 and Interstate 110 will be called ExpressLanes, instead.
Los Angeles and Xerox are building this project with the idea of reducing highway congestion overall…Is the death of the carpool lane as we know it environmentally sound, though? → Read More
That didn’t take long. Yesterday, we reported that hacker @koush had successfully made the Xoom moddable by installing his ClockworkMod Recovery ROM manager. At that point root access was not achieved, but, no less than a day later he made it happen. → Read More
Wait wha? According to this SEC form, daily deals site Groupon has raised another $16.2 million. There’s no word on whether this is an add-on to its recent $950 million round or just a smaller mini-round, in any case it seems unrelated to any M&A activity. Listed on the form is Blue Media’s Eric Lefosky, Brad Keywell and Accel’s Kevin Efrusy, among others.
Groupon recently turned down an offer from Google, and has raised over $1.13 billion to date when you include the amount on this form. When asked whether this was part of a new round, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason said, “We typically don’t comment on these things sorry. Ask me something else.” → Read More
Apple has never been the best at securing its OS. At hacking conferences like Defcon, nobody even bothers hacking OS X because it literally takes only a few seconds using old exploits, and new ones seem to be found in minutes. Apple may be looking to remedy this sad situation by spreading the developer build of 10.7 around the security sector, perhaps to get a few pointers on how not to be a complete pushover. → Read More
Kidlandia, the awesome site that lets you create your own personalized fantasy maps for your kids, has raised $2.5 million led by Alsop Louie Partners with GRP, Net Discovery, Ivan Sutherland and Jim Sandler participating. This brings the startup’s total funding to $3.5 million.
As we’ve reported in the past, Kidlandia lets parents and kids create maps of a fantasy land, where the child is King or Queen of their own eponymous fantasy kingdom. You can insert family members or friends names into the map, so other areas of the land incorporate family members’ names. The map also features whimsical characters from Kidlandia’s brand Kreechurs. → Read More
For a long time now (this feature was first mentioned back in 2006), a high-DPI mode has been in development at Apple. It’s a step towards resolution independence, a UI holy grail in which UI elements are the same size for users across all resolutions — so whether you’re looking at an icon on an iPhone, MacBook Air, or Cinema Display, they’re all exactly the same size. And it looks like with Lion, Apple may finally be expecting this to become a reality. → Read More
Let the speculation begin. The BBC is holding an event next week, on the same day and exactly the same time that iPad 2 is to be announced. The Apple event starts at 10am PST and the BBC event starts at 6pm GMT (which are exactly the same). If true, it looks like there could be some video chatting between the two companies from across the pond. → Read More
The countdown to the next Call of Duty game has begun. Activision has been sending dogtags to people in their good graces (not us, of course), and printed on said dogtags is the URL www.findmakarov.com. → Read More
It’s Oscar weekend so of course every social media service, smart phone app and “tech” blog is going to find some movie angle to remind you that they exist. And because I tend to write the more fluffy cultural pieces, I will be stuck writing about them, even though I hate Hollywood and celebrities of the non-YouTube or TopCoder variety.
But Foursquare’s map of 2010 movie checkin frequency (above) is an exception to the “blatant attempt to glom publicity off of an ‘important’ event rule,” and deserves reposting. And yes, the mention of Sex In the City 2 on the pink side of the Venn Diagram here makes me ashamed for my gender. Very ashamed. → Read More
The UK is much further along with having adult discussions about Internet piracy. The result of those discussions may be controversial, such as that subset of the Digital Economy Act that requires ISPs to monitor all traffic sent over their infrastructure for infringing content, thereby exposing themselves to “you didn’t do enough to stop this” lawsuits, but at least they’re having a conversation about it. → Read More
It has now been at least a year since I last used the optical drive on any of my computers. And now I’m really starting to believe I never will again. Which I love.
Last October, I noted that I was ready for the launch of the new MacBook Airs because I realized I had never once used the optical drive on my MacBook Pro. It was simply a huge waste of space. And since I’ve switched over to the Air — the best computer I’ve ever owned — I have zero doubt that this optical drive-free experience will soon be the reality for all Mac computing. And now it’s clear that OS X Lion will be the final ingredient needed. → Read More
Battlefield 3 doesn’t even have a release date yet, but EA has already started talking about DLC. Sigh. It’s a bit disappointing: so many of us here (well, me, Matt, and Devin) are genuinely looking forward to the game, and we’re already being teased with offers of almighty DLC. It’s so unsettling. → Read More
Oh dear. Sony has now sued graf_chokolo for one million euros. What’s the point? What is this going to accomplish, outside of paying for a bunch of lawyers’ holidays? → Read More
How much should a startup spend on marketing? The answer, according to VC Fred Wilson, is zero. The best marketing for a startup when it is just getting off the ground are kick-ass products. Great products market themselves. If you have a line item in your business plan for marketing, you are doing it wrong.
That is not to say that startups don’t need to do any marketing at all. And, let’s be clear, Wilson is taking about consumer Web startups, not enterprise startups or those in other industries. But as he writes in a post today: → Read More
Apple just can’t get a break. Consumer Reports is, well, reporting that in their testing scenarios the Verizon iPhone 4 has the same “death grip” attenuation issues as the AT&T/GSM model.
Just as with the previous model, the Verizon iPhone 4 suffers from the same conductive gap issues and the problems manifest when you touch the small spot between the two pieces of metal cladding. → Read More
Bloomberg is launching a new daily hourly television show called Bloomberg West next week, we hear. It’s on the air daily at 3 pm Pacific and then again at 8 pm. The show will focus on technology, innovation and business, says the promo clip that has been running regularly on Bloomberg. It’s being recorded from their new San Francisco offices.
The show is hosted by Emily Chang, formerly with CNN in Bejing, and Cory Johnson, who was most recently a hedge fund manager and is a long time journalist. It’ll will be available to 250 million people worldwide who have Bloomberg TV.
Promo clip is below. → Read More
Ask a VC was on hiatus for a few weeks, but your Friday investor-talk fix is back. Our guest this week is Tony Conrad, partner at True Ventures and founder of About.Me, which recently sold to AOL along with TechCrunch.
There was a pent-up flood of questions this week, and Conrad addressed many of them. In case you want to skip around here they are in order:
-Why does True Ventures invest in more product and gadget companies than most VCs? What do they look for?
-True’s views on International investing.
-Conrad’s advice on getting into business in Southeast Asia and the moment he knew he’d “gone native.”
-Does Conrad have a secret “formula” for building companies to flip? And did he sell About.Me so early, because he didn’t believe in the business?
-Why True isn’t betting big in the current game frenzy.
-Why True doesn’t bet on education or music companies.
-And a general roundup of questions about how to pitch True. → Read More
