Don’t have a Blu-ray player yet? You’re going to want to get one before June 21, for that’s when Louis CK’s “Louie” makes its way to the format. It’ll also be available on plain ol’ DVD if that’s your thing. → Read More
One of the things green energy proponents eagerly look forward to is an “artificial leaf”: a truly small, portable, modular photosynthetic power plant. The ability to take a hundred or a thousand such units and plaster them on a wall, roof, tree, or whatever, and have them store power in a simple fuel cell all day long would be a great way to make power distribution less tricky in countries where there aren’t exactly power lines running everywhere.
MIT’s Daniel Nocera has apparently made a major advance just recently, producing an artificial leaf that not only uses cheap materials, but is ten times as efficient as a real leaf at the photosynthesis process. → Read More
There isn’t much information out there about Stripe, a new payments startup cofounded by brothers Patrick Collison and John Collison (last seen selling their startup Auctomatic to Live Current Media for $5 million).
It’s an online business to business and business to consumer payments provider, we’ve confirmed. “How is it different than PayPal or Google Checkout?” I asked someone who’s seen the product. Their answer – “It doesn’t suck.” → Read More
This is a nice little sale on one of the best network media streamers. Newegg is selling the WD TV Live Plus for only $79.99 with the coupon code HARDOCPX323E. It’s a great little box with web apps and robust media format support including MKV containers and .avi. It’s a great deal for only $80. [via Dealnews] → Read More
Hurrah! After a short hiatus while Sarah travelled around Indonesia at the behest of the State Department, Why Is This News is back!
And what better way to mark our triumphant return to your screens than with a whole show dedicated to Indonesia, and specifically the curious lack of a brain drain from the country to the US.
Apparently Indonesian students are so keen to return home after studying in the US that they’re one of the few nationalities to which the government is glad to issue visas. “They just never overstay,” one US official told Sarah.
So is Indonesians’ loyalty to home a good or bad thing for the country? Video below… → Read More
Because the world of 3D isn’t confusing enough already! Yes, a new standard is rising, led by Panasonic and joined by a number of partners. M-3DI is a new “can we all just agree on this” standard for active-shutter 3D systems. What differentiates it from the systems that don’t follow its standard? Nothing, it appears, except that M-3DI devices will all work with each other. I guess that’s something. → Read More
These thick rubber things are called impactband(s). They have been proven to protect an iPhone from serious drop heights (video below). Sure they’re thick, but some people won’t mind considering a broken iPhone is very expensive to replace. These guys usually cost $25, but today is your day to try and get one for free. → Read More
Onkyo has added a new stereo receiver with networking capabilities to their lineup for 2011. The TX-8050 Network Stereo Receiver gets many of the new connection features found in Onkyo’s bigger multi-channel receivers like a USB port on the front and an ethernet port for connecting to multiple internet radio stations (Pandora, Rhapsody, Napster, SIRIUS XM Internet Radio, Slacker, Last.fm, Mediafly, and vTuner). The TX-8050′s network function also takes advantage of the Onkyo Remote App for iPhone, allowing owners to control functions of the receiver as well as picking which internet radio station to listen in on. → Read More
The 3DS is in the sweaty palms of hundreds of thousands by this time, and you know what that means: launch issues! Yes, like some other major hardware releases, the 3DS’s launch will not be without hiccups. There are reports that a few of the new handhelds are randomly crashing pretty hard to a black screen (seen above, and documented here) recommending a hard reset.
Don’t panic! It’s probably not a big deal. → Read More
It looks like the Crysis 2 Direct X 11 patch could be coming sooner rather than later. An item on a German PC gaming site—Germany certainly loves its PC gaming&mash;says that the patch should hit the Internets tomorrow. This is most welcome news. → Read More
A new early stage investment firm is de-cloaking in London today. Three prominent Angel investors on the tech scene in London – Stefan Glaenzer, Eileen Burbidge and Robert Dighero – have been operating out of their White Bear Yard base in Clerkenwell for just under a year. Rumours circulated that they were looking to raise a real fund to continue their work, and now the news is about to break (ok, now it’s broken).
Passion Capital (@passioncapital)is a brand new fund aimed squarely at early stage tech startups and has closed its first investment at £37.5 million ($60 million). They anticipate making about 50 investments, where the average investment size is likely to be £150k-£200k at a time. But they say they will go as small as £15k-£50k and also “most certainly higher” than £200k depending on the situation. They are being pretty open. Here’s their investment strategy and they’ve even published their term sheet.
This first fund for Passion comprises significant funding from the private sector, family funds and high net-worth individuals. In addition the UK Government has also invested £25 million via the the tenth Enterprise Capital Fund (ECF). → Read More
Video advertising company Adap.tv has raised $20 million in funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners with Gemini Israel Funds, Redpoint Ventures and Spark Capital also participating in the round. This brings Adap.tv’s total funding to $43 million.
Adap.tv’s ad platform allows advertisers to buy and manage online video ad inventory from a single interface and enables publishers to monetize their online video content. Advertisers can run campaigns across all publishers, ad networks and the Adap.tv Marketplace. The Adap.tv Marketplace connects publishers and brand name advertisers, with over 4,200 sites selling inventory and hundreds of campaigns running daily. → Read More
The story of SimpleGeo is a familiar one: two founders — Matt Galligan and Joe Stump — set off to create location-based games, only to find that the tools they wanted to use to build their apps didn’t exist yet. So they switched gears and decided to build what they wished they had: a suite of tools optimized for the creation of location-based services (which was probably a good call given the explosion of location-aware mobile devices).
The startup launched almost exactly one year ago, and now offers products including ‘Places’ (a database of POIs) and ‘Context’, which lets developers query for data relevant to a given location, like the local weather. And now, they’re ready for what Galligan calls the company’s “grand unveiling”, explaining that it’s what they’ve been focused on for the last year: SimpleGeo Storage, which will be going live tomorrow. → Read More
Flash drives are a dime a dozen these days, so if you’re going to actually spend money on one, it may as well be one that can take a little abuse. After all, if you plan on having it with you everywhere you go, there’s a good chance this thing is going to get dropped, sat on, spilled on, and otherwise beaten up. The big flash drive sellers all have entries in this category, some newer than others. I thought it’d be worth taking a closer look at these to see whether they live up to their rugged pedigree, and whether that pedigree is worth the money to begin with. → Read More
Jack Dorsey isn’t the only one announcing a new role at Twitter … Twitter HR Manager Cheryl Palarca tweeted that the company has hired another batch of people today, “in honor of Lady Gaga’s birthday.”
For those of you that got excited (myself included), that Gaga thing is a joke, even though the popstar did recently visit the company and today is indeed her 25th birthday. The actual number of hires is also 24 not 25, which bumps the total Twitter staff up to 450 people, Twitter PR rep Carolyn Penner tells me. So Twitter basically just hired 5% of the company. → Read More
This past weekend, we broke the news that iOS 5, the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, was likely being released in the fall. This would break the tradition of a summer release. And we also noted that instead of a separate event in the early spring, Apple was likely to use their WWDC event in June to talk about the new OS for the first time. Sure enough, today came word from Apple that seems to verify both things.
Apple will host WWDC in San Francisco on June 6 through June 10, they formally announced today. The focus of the event? “At this year’s conference we are going to unveil the future of iOS and Mac OS,” Apple marketing exec Phil Schiller says in the release. Yes, that means iOS 5 as well as OS X Lion. We previously reported that Lion development was moving along quickly and it could mean a release around WWDC. I suspect we may at least see a release candidate given to developers around then.
And if Apple intends to first show off iOS 5 at the event, they won’t release it then. Developers will need time to prepare their apps for the big changes in store. → Read More
Considering that only 1,500 Tesla Roadsters are out on the roads, it’s amazing they’ve been able to clock up 10 million miles since 2008. Even more impressive is that the Roadsters have collectively saved 500,000 gallons of fuel and over 5.3 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, while maintaining supercar performance. → Read More
Today’s return of Twitter inventor Jack Dorsey to the company he created to once again head up its product efforts raises the question of what will co-founder Evan Williams be doing now. When he handed over the CEO reigns to Dick Costolo last October, the company said he was going to focus more on the product side of things. Dorsey is now the head of product and the two co-founders have a contentious relationship. (Early investor Fred Wilson describes the relationship like that of John Lennon and Paul McCartney of the Beatles: “They made great music together for a while, but then they both kind of got ambitious about things and didn’t see eye to eye anymore.”)
It’s an open secret in tech circles that Williams is not spending that much time at Twitter anymore. His absence has been been noted in various news reports, but it’s usually stated as rumor or from unattributed sources. Well, it’s true and it’s official. Today, I asked Twitter about Ev’s current role in light of Dorsey’s taking over the product lead. A company spokesperson sent me the following statement: → Read More
Yay for easily-confirmed Internet rumors! MacRumors just posted a photo claiming to come from a RadioShack internal memo, which states 500 retail locations will start selling the iPad 2 on March 29th. That’s tomorrow if you happen to be reading this the day I hit the publish button. This comes as a bit of a surprise as a RadioShack has yet to officially announce iPad 2 plans even though they’re apparently going on sale tomorrow. However, a quick call to two of my local RadioShacks revealed that the memo is real (one lady read me the memo) but these associates were unable to tell if their particular stores were receiving any inventory by tomorrow’s launch. → Read More
