We’ve been more skeptical than most about Spotify’s promises to launch in the US, but it looks like Europe’s favourite music service is finally ready to make good on its promise.
Deals are in place with the major US record labels and Valley investors are lining up to provide the cash needed to pay for costly music licenses.
The catch? We’re hearing from multiple sources today that in order to finance the cost of a US launch, Valley investors have demanded the company shut down its European service, effective noon on Friday (GMT). The brand new ‘Spotify USA‘ — unavailable to users in Europe — will launch on Monday morning. → Read More
Most people over the age of 20 will remember the ViewMaster toys that let you see slideshows from your favorite movies and cartoons in 3D. Shabby, static 3D, but still. Well, Hasbro has put out a product that, while it sounds ridiculous at first, is actually sheer genius. Replace the slide wheels with an iPhone! It’s brilliant! → Read More
Hyundai plans to reveal their rather fetching Blue2 (pronounced “Blue square”) hydrogen fuel cell concept later this week at the Seoul Motor Show. We haven’t been seeing many hydrogen-powered cars lately — most of the ongoing eco-craze involves electric cars. Nonetheless, hydrogen-powered cars are considered to be the industry’s endgame, and the “liberator” for polluting vehicles. Exciting stuff. → Read More
Earlier this afternoon, Mike posted an exclusive story about an internal war raging within Google.
In the post he mentioned that Google revenue chief Nikesh Arora had recently returned from a two week jaunt in the Caribbean with Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt aboard Rosenblatt’s yacht, The Adsense.
A few minutes after the post went live, Rosenblatt called the TechCrunch office and left a voicemail. Boy is he pissed. Not at any of the other details of the story — which he doesn’t deny — but about Mike revealing details of his yacht.
We understand that, in these piracy-infested times, the super-rich are rightly protective of their yachts — but come on dude, it’s called ‘The Adsense’. That’s news!
Voicemail below. → Read More
Back in August of ’10 (them were the days) we posted about how an Israeli company called Better Place was testing out a system for switching out batteries in Japanese electric taxis. They drive in, get their new battery, and drive out. A good idea for fleet vehicles, we said at the time, but it would take some refinement before coming to regular cars.
Well, Better Place is taking that step now, showing off its first “domestic” station, located in Israel. → Read More
This year’s European startup conference GeeknRolla has become a platform for news, as startups launched and speakers broke news direct from the stage.
Duedil, the business reputation startup, secured first prize in the startup competition, and an on-the-day announcement from DFJ Esprit that it would award the winner a £50,000 no strings investment in the form of a convertible note. This would convert into its next funding round at the price of the next round. That kind of announcement is more common in Silicon Valley, so to have the deal announced literally within a couple of hours of Duedil’s pitch on stage was real news for a European event. Let’s hope we see more of that kind of fast action in the rest of the year. They also won a crack at a year’s worth of Windows Azure hosting, £5,000 in free legal advice form Orrick and free premium job advertisements for a year on CoderStack (normally £120 per ad per month). Not a bad result for a 3 minute pitch. → Read More
Shortly after Apple releases new products into the market, they find their way onto eBay — at a premium, of course. According to data released by eBay, the iPad 2 has been one of eBay’s most popular items over the last few weeks; eBay sold 12,000 iPads in the first two weeks (65% to US customers and 35% to international customers). → Read More
Power struggles within Google’s executive team, which have been brewing since the announcement of long time CEO Eric Schmidt’s departure, are apparently bubbling up to the surface.
Case in point: In an extraordinary move to illustrate its independence, say sources, the Google webspam team actually classified Google Places as spam and a content farm, and temporarily removed it from search results. → Read More
For years now, Facebook has offered quite a few ways to access the site from mobile devices, and they’ve proven immensely popular. In February 2010 the site had 100 million mobile users per month — today it’s announcing that it’s up to 250 million. To coincide with the growth stats, Facebook has some other news to announce about mobile.
We hear most often about Facebook’s native applications available for iPhone, Android, WebOS, and other app platforms, but a significant majority of mobile users actually access the site from the web. And up until now Facebook’s web setup has been a bit complicated: users on smartphones like Android and iPhones have been directed to touch.facebook.com, which is optimized for large touchscreens. And users accessing the site from a featurephones (and there are a lot of them) would be directed to the more plain-looking m.facebook.com. Today, that’s changing: Facebook is merging touch.facebook.com and m.facebook.com into the same site. → Read More
Video game and software retailer Gamestop has acquired TechCrunch50 company Spawn Labs, a startup that develops game streaming technology. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. In addition, GameStop also announced the acquisition of game distribution platform Impulse, which is a division of software company Stardock.
Spawn Labs launched in 2009 as a Slingbox for video games. Via, Spawn Labs appliance and computers apps transmit HD-quality (720p) content over the Internet so that players can use the peer-to-peer game streaming service to play games simultaneously. → Read More
One of the best surprises at SIHH 2011 was how much I enjoyed the A. Lange & Sohne Richard Lange Tourbillon “Pour le Merite.” The regulator style watch took influence from a pocket watch made in the Dresden area a while back. It had three overlapping subdials, with one for the hours, minutes, and seconds. Lange took the concept and added to it some very complex mechanical features that make this not only a neat looking watch, but one with a very sophisticated inside. → Read More
Time Warner Cable received rare praise these past few weeks with the launch of its iPad app. Not familiar with it? It lets Time Warner Cable subscribers view 32 different TV networks on their iPad provided they’re connected to their home (read: Time Warner-provided) Wi-Fi network. (You can’t watch these channels while at the park and connected to 3G, in other words.) As you might expect, several networks have reacted by freaking out, arguing that Time Warner Cable doesn’t have the right to develop such an app and stream their content. It’s madness that we still have to deal with this in 2011, but I’m confident that in the future we’ll look back on these controversies and laugh heartily. “Ha, what simpletons, thinking you should only be allowed to watch video content on a TV. I’m watching the game on my Internet-connected contacts lenses* right now!” → Read More
As hard as they tried, RIM just couldn’t find a fanbase with the BlackBerry Storm. Between a mild critical reception, a handful of hardware issues in the first batches, and the super wonky SurePress touchscreen that people came to know it for, the “Storm” name has been… tainted, in a way.
Seems like RIM agrees. A handful of mega clear shots of the next full touchscreen BlackBerry device, currently codenamed “Monza” (or “Monaco”, if we’re talking about the Verizon version) just leaked out, and word on the street is that it might not carry the Storm name. → Read More
How do you make an iPod nano watch band cost $18,000? Diamonds. Lots and lots of pave-set diamonds. Asteroid. [BGR] → Read More
“A Slovenian language directory for Windows Live is causing us considerable headaches this morning, and we have no one to blame but ourselves.” That’s right from the GFI Labs’ blog. The Vipre anti-spyware maker is claiming for responsibility for the little Samsung keylogger incident that caused an understandable uproar yesterday after the software provided a false positive keylogger warning.
In short, GFI Labs confirmed Samsung’s explanation that a rarely-used and aggressive anti-spyware method in the VIPRE software flagged the Slovenian language directory as the Starlogger keylogger. Apparently the C:\WINDOWS\SL is also the directory Starlogger uses and the obscure detection mode was looking at directory names. GFI Labs states “these types of detections are seldom used, and when they are, they are subject to an extensive peer review and QA process.” → Read More
Exclusive - Munich, Germany-based social games developer and publisher MegaZebra has secured ‘multiple millions of euros’ in its latest round of financing led by Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures. Previous backer Kizoo Technology Ventures also participated, alongside private investor Markus Stolz.
Founded in 2008 and originally supporting a variety of social networks, MegaZebra in the course of last year shifted its focus squarely on developing and publishing games for the Facebook platform only. → Read More
The Chevy Volt might soon have a stateside cousin if a Bloomberg report is correct. The outlet quotes two sources as saying GM is developing a Buick vehicle that uses the Volt’s series hybrid Voltec powertrain with a scheduled 2013 release. Apparently the Buick would be a reworked Opel Ampera, which itself is a modified Chevy Volt for the European market. The new model however would have Buick’s trademark grille and front styling. → Read More
A day after Google unveiled its “+1″ product, someone has already taken a close enough look at the code to track down an embeddable +1 Button.
Said button wasn’t supposed to be public yet – they essentially let people recommend any online content on Google search. → Read More
