March 31st, 2011

Audi Gets Into The Bike Game, Presumably To Compete With McLaren

Earlier this week we saw that McLaren got together with Specialized to make their exquisite Venge road bike. Apparently Audi felt left out of the party, and has announced the fruits of its collaboration with Portland bike-maker Renovo: the “duo” series.

The bikes’ primary differentiating feature is, of course, the wood frames. Audi has built them out of “woods selected to match the look of Audi vehicle interiors.” One assumes they also picked the wood based on its strength and weight, but they don’t really mention that. → Read More

March 31st, 2011

Facebook Terminated Corporate Development Employee Over Insider Trading Scandal

Facebook corporate development manager Michael Brown (pictured left in happier days) recently and abruptly left Facebook, and the company then hired a senior Google employee to replace him. It was a curious departure and the chatter around Silicon Valley was that there was a lot more to the story.

And in fact there is. Via a scandal that could have far reaching consequences by bringing even more SEC scrutiny onto rampant secondary trading in non-public startups like Facebook and Twitter.

Brown, multiple sources have confirmed, purchased Facebook stock on secondary markets (like those occurring weekly on SecondMarket), which Facebook considers insider trading and grounds for immediate termination. Sources say this is well communicated throughout the company. It’s unclear how egregious the trade may have been. We’ve heard the trade was related to knowledge of the Goldman Sachs investment that value the company at $50 billion earlier this year, and we’ve heard from others closer to the situation that it was just a naive mistake and Brown has paid the price and moved on. One source says the trades were made last September, well before the Goldman deal was in the works. Either way, Facebook took it seriously and no doubt the SEC would too. → Read More

March 31st, 2011

NYC Announces BigApps Winners Roadify, Sportaneous, And DontEat.at

New York City announced the winners of its second BiggApps competition tonight. BiggApps is a way to get developers to use city and government data to create useful apps for citizens and visitors to New York City. The prize money was doubled to $40,000 split up among 14 winning apps.

The first prize went to Roadify, an iPhone app that crowdsources information about public transport and parking spots. Users can give or get parking spots, realtime updates about buses and subways, or transit schedules. The parking finder is genius. It shows the spot using GPS on a map. I think everyone who has ever tried to park in New York City has dreamt of an app like this. Now someone actually built it. → Read More

March 31st, 2011

Mark Cuban Teams With Qualcomm To Bring Augmented Reality To Mavericks Tickets

Thanks to the influence of owner and tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban, Dallas Mavericks season ticket holders will be able to enjoy a touch of the technological when claiming their 2011 playoff tickets. The Mavericks have teamed with Qualcomm to add augmented reality to this year’s playoff tickets.

Augmented Reality — or “AR” for those “in the know” — refers to a display in which simulated imagery or graphics are superimposed onto a view of the real world. In the case of these basketball tickets from the future, viewing on your Android will allow you to play an interactive game. → Read More

March 31st, 2011

'Know Your Meme' On What It's Like To Be An Internet Folklorist

The website and show “Know Your Meme” were swallowed up this week by ICanHasCheezburger networks in a seven figure deal, proving once again that Internet memes are serious business. In light of this news, the Know Your Meme crew, Internet folklorists Elspeth Rountree, Kenyatta Cheese, Jamie Wilkinson, Patrick Davison and Mike Rugnetta actually performed an episode of their heralded show live on stage today at Web 2.0 Expo. → Read More

March 31st, 2011

Play Him Off, Flugelhorn Feline: YouTube Time Travels To 1911

Head to YouTube after 4AM local time and you’ll notice that it looks a little old fashioned — and not in a 1999 blinking construction sign sort of way.

YouTube is reverting back to what it would have looked like had it been around in 1911, complete with grainy, sepia video footage, no audio tracks (save for piano accompaniment), and title cards in place of the site’s normal comments. Yes, it’s time for April Fools, and the world’s largest video portal is ringing it in once with some video player trickery — a tradition it started in 2008 after RickRolling all of its users.

YouTube has accompanied the gag with a blog post from President Taft, and it’s also put together some 1911-ified memes, featuring the ancestors of Annoying Orange and a certain musically-inclined feline. Even some of the ads are old fashioned. → Read More

March 31st, 2011

Crinkled Cup Glass, For Your Modernist Beverage Needs

→ Read More

March 31st, 2011

Nexus 7000 Mouse Is Ultra Quiet, Not Great For Annoying Co-Workers

If ordering a new mouse off Amazon — because it looked cool and you have prime — only to find that it clicks like a 1980s keyboard frustrates you, then check out the Nexus 7000 quiet mouse. It has a great shape and look, comes in white or black, has one of those really tiny USB receiver dongles, and costs only $28. [via The Awesomer] → Read More

March 31st, 2011

Photos Of Pentax's Upcoming NC-1 Mirrorless Camera Leaked

Some photos of Pentax’s NC-1 have leaked ahead of the supposed May / June release. If anything, this says they’re close, if not finished, with the smallest mirrorless camera in the world. → Read More

March 31st, 2011

Apple Patents: Battery In Charger And Five-Finger Gestures In OS X

Not every Apple patent that comes down the line is worth gawking at, but these two are definitely worth a quick note. First, putting a battery in a charger is a pretty good idea — though I doubt they’re the first to do it. And this touchable OS X patent is a nice reminder of Apple’s convergence strategy. → Read More

March 31st, 2011

Volt Takes Its Top Off, For One Day Only

Road and Track is a great car magazine, but they forgot an important fact about April Fools’ Day: the date. Yesterday, March 30th, they outed some pictures of the Volt sans roof. Their post even discussed some new tech for the unsightly little thing, despite its lack of a regular size gas tank. “We’re extremely excited about the new GM-patented photovoltaic film that covers two-thirds of the soft-top’s surface,” says GM spokesperson Taylor Wildwood. Uh-huh. Nice try guys, but those Volt engineers have more important things to do, like building rebadging the Volt. → Read More

March 31st, 2011

Video Curation Is Growing Up, ShortForm Hits One Million Visitors

With 35 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, the Google-owned video behemoth would be the second largest search engine were it standalone site. Web video has become a powerful medium. But, I think it’s also fair to say that this powerful medium is in serious need of curation. What if you’re just looking for a quick laugh, a short video, and don’t want to wade through billions of videos — what if you want to create your own, personally curated streaming video channel? Hmmm? Thankfully, content curation has come to video: ShortForm shows it’s here to stay.

The San Francisco-based startup allows users to create personalized channels of web video content, easily pulling clips from YouTube and other video sites. You can play videos back-to-back to create a stream of video, not unlike the TV viewing experience. Creating custom channels is simple, and I would say the UI is more user-friendly (or at least more attractive) than that of YouTube. → Read More

March 31st, 2011

Surgical Robot Folds Tiny Paper Airplane

You might have heard of the da Vinci surgical robot — it’s the state-of-the-art system used by surgeons to operate remotely, and although it’s quite a bulky setup, it’s also nearly as precise as human hands. Seattle surgeon Jim Porter, in order to show off the da Vinci’s capabilities, folds a paper airplane using the system’s little grippers.

Check out the video inside, it’s really quite cool. → Read More

March 31st, 2011

Tech CEO Approval Ratings: Schmidt Goes Out On A High, Donahoe Climbs, Bartz Falls

A survey taken over the last year by Glassdoor, a jobs and career community that allows users to anonymously share an inside look at jobs and companies, confirms that Eric Schmidt looks better when he’s on his way out. As the Google big whig prepares to step down from a decade of service as chief exec, his employee approval rating is at an all time high.

On the flip side of the popularity coin, Yahoo’s Carol Bartz is seeing her honeymoon period come to a close. In what is likely unsurprising news, among tech CEOs, Bartz saw the biggest decline in her approval rating in the past year, compared to the 12 months prior. Between March 2009 and March 2010, she held a 77 percent approval rating among her employees, whereas compared to the following year, her approval rating dropped to 50 percent. Granted, this is still 16 percent higher than that of her predecessor, Jerry Yang. Yang had a 2008 George Bush-like approval rating of 34 percent when he stepped down as CEO. → Read More

March 31st, 2011

CrunchDeals: Battlefield: Bad Company 2 For $5

Wow, this is a pretty crazy deal. Impulse is selling Battlefield: Bad Company 2, which the guys tell me is just excellent, for the ridiculous price of $5. It’s normally around $20, and even in the Steam winter sale, it only got down to $8, I think. → Read More

March 31st, 2011

HTC Arrive At Wirefly For $25 With Free Shipping

If you’re thinking of picking up HTC’s Arrive, the Windows Phone 7 QWERTY slider of your dreams, now might be a good time. Sprint is selling it at the premium phone price ($199 with a two-year contract), but if you order today from Wirefly you can grab it for only $25. With contract, of course. Be sure to put in the coupon code “ARRIVE0331″ before checkout to get that extra $25 off. [via LogicBuy] → Read More

March 31st, 2011

Movie Studios Approve $30 Rental Plan, Theater Owners Mightily Upset

It must be an absolute nightmare being a Hollywood executive in 2011. Four big studios (20th Century Fox, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros.) have announced plans to introduce a premium video-on-demand service, to debut on DirecTV next month as “Home Premiere,” that will screen movies a mere 60 days after their theatrical debut. Renting such a movie will set you back $30. And if you think you’re angry about that, just imagine how theater owners must feel. → Read More

March 31st, 2011

Google Wants To Make Your Face Searchable (Updated)

Google is planning to introduce a smartphone app that can identify faces. If you capture someone’s head shot on your smartphone, Google will search their database of photos to try name them. We were pretty excited when Google Goggles came out. But this is a bit excessive. → Read More

March 31st, 2011

+Like Browser Extension Pretty Much Eliminates The Need For Google +1

Google launched the +1 feature of its social layer yesterday and if you’re like most tech journalists you probably likened the move to attaching a Facebook Like button to Google search results.

Well now someone has gone and done exactly that, no joke. Meet +Like, a Firefox, Safari and Chrome extension that lets you see how many people have liked a specific Google search result on Facebook as well as which of your Facebook Friends have recommended a specific piece of content, whether or not that action took place on Google search. → Read More

March 31st, 2011

Boston Colleges Warns Students Against Using Wi-Fi (But Then Retracts Said Warning)

Common sense, for once, has prevailed. For whatever reason Boston College was telling its students that using a wireless router could be considered a “common example of copyright infringement.” Word got out, the Internet complained, and now the offending bullet point has been removed. → Read More

Events

Crunchies Awards
January 31, 2012
Davies Symphony Hall
San Francisco CA
Learn MoreBuy Tickets

Real-Time
Crunchbase

Prova Systems — Received $50k in Unattributed funding from Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeast Pennsylvania
1.27.2012
Fearless Studios — Company added to CrunchBase
1.27.2012
Fearless Studios — Acquired by Kabam.
1.27.2012
Fearless Studios — Acquired by Kabam.
1.27.2012
1.27.2012
Avila Therapeutics — Acquired by Celgene for $925M.
1.26.2012
1.25.2012
Timekiwi — Acquired by Overblog.
1.25.2012
Prova Systems — Received $50k in Unattributed funding from Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeast Pennsylvania
1.27.2012
Antisense Pharma — Received $11M in Series F funding from MIG Fonds and Global Asset Fund
1.26.2012
Edison Pharmaceuticals — Received $4.1M in Series E funding
1.26.2012
Broad Institute — Received $32.5M in Grant funding from Klarman Family Foundation
1.26.2012
CN Creative — Received £2M in Series A funding from Advent Life Sciences
1.26.2012
John Stockdale — Invested in Verbling.
1.26.2012
MIG Fonds — Invested in Antisense Pharma.
1.26.2012
1.26.2012
1.26.2012
Fearless Studios — Company added to CrunchBase
1.27.2012
Dawin Electronics — Company added to CrunchBase
1.27.2012
PointsPay — Company added to CrunchBase
1.27.2012
Easilydo — Company added to CrunchBase
1.27.2012
Edison Pharmaceuticals — Company added to CrunchBase
1.27.2012
PointsPay — Product added to CrunchBase
1.27.2012
Free Youtube Download — Product added to CrunchBase
1.27.2012
League of Legends - Multiplayer Online Battle Arena — Product added to CrunchBase
1.27.2012
Codeine Framework — Product added to CrunchBase
1.26.2012
Codeine — Product added to CrunchBase
1.26.2012
CrunchBase