President Obama seems to understand the role that startups play and the contribution that skilled immigrants make to U.S. economic growth. He has talked a lot about the importance of science and engineering, and expressed fears that, unless we improve our game, China and India will out-innovate us. He even visited Silicon Valley recently to talk to its elite. And he has had his Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra, make several trips here to the Valley.
I commend the President for putting a spotlight on entrepreneurship with his Startup America initiative; but I can’t help wondering whether this is just a giant press release. It needs more substance: a way for foreign-born entrepreneurs to start companies here and a leveling of the playing field for entrepreneurs wanting to solve government problems.
I debated this with Aneesh Chopra, at the Economist Innovation Summit in Berkeley, last week. → Read More
So you want your very own Hasselblad, but don’t want to spend the $40K? Well, this is right up your alley, though some assembly is required. → Read More
Almost exactly one year ago (their birthday is tomorrow), WePay launched its group payment platform to the public. The goal was simple: give people an easy way to divvy up bills, member dues, and other common transactions with an integrated payment system and easy reminders to nudge those fraternity members who haven’t paid their dues yet. The service is also handy for selling tickets and collecting donations.
In light of the occasion, WePay is starting to talk about some of its numbers (albeit vaguely). WePay CEO Bill Clerico says that in the last three months, the service’s engagement numbers have surged from around 5,000 users per week to 25,000 per week. These users aren’t just visiting the site — they’re actually taking substantive action, like sending bills. He attributes this growth to optimizations the site has recently made to its sharing flows on Twitter, Facebook and its emails. He also says that WePay has drawn a lot of new users from referrals. → Read More
Short version: A good-looking and fairly durable alternative to your usual black-nylon camera bag. Not an all-purpose bag, though — definitely for the photographer who loves waxed canvas, not the gadget guy or world traveler, despite its Indiana Jones looks. → Read More
BuzzFeed and Huffington Post co-founder Jonah Peretti talked at Web 2.0 Expo today about the much misunderstood subject of how to make something go viral (no it’s not all about cats and bacon). Peretti began the talk running through his various early experiments in virality and what they taught him about why content spreads.
As part of his theory as to why content that elicits a reaction from users has more of a penchant for going viral, Peretti contrasted Google and Facebook in terms of their approaches to information. → Read More
Roland, makers of all things MIDI and beyond, have a new product out called V-Drums® Friend Jam. The software lets you connect your Roland V-Drums (electronic, MIDI drums) to your Mac or PC with a MIDI interface (not included) and, in the words of the press release, “allows V-Drums users across the globe to interact with each other while improving their drumming skills with play-along MP3 songs and practice evaluation features.” → Read More
Long ago, before Chrome existed for OS X (so, 2009) my browser of choice was Camino. You’ll be forgiven if you’ve never heard of it, it’s an open-source project that zero people work on full-time. And it’s only available on the Mac. In fact, if you have heard of it, it may be as the other browser Mozilla makes. And its future is now at a crossroads.
As the team lays out in a post on their blog, a major change is needed to keep Camino going. Why? Because throughout its existence, the browser has been built using Mozilla’s Gecko rendering engine — the one built for Firefox. But now that engine will no longer be embeddable in other browsers — even other Mozilla browsers, like Camino. → Read More
Acer is realizing that the iPad isn’t going to topple itself. While the strategy of just making shells for other companies’ OSes and components has worked for Acer for years, that clearly isn’t an approach that had any effect at all on the iPad’s dominance of the tablet sector.
People will get tired of the closed iOS, said Acer, and just spontaneously choose a crappy Android 2.x tablet made by people who truly don’t care. Not so much! → Read More
As promised yesterday, we’ve got a bit of a giveaway goin’ on over at our brand new Facebook page. Two lucky MobileCrunch fans are gonna be walkin’ away with a brand new Mophie Juice Pack Air iPhone case. Part protective case, part external battery, this thing should keep your iPhone safe and juiced up. So, how do you enter to win? It’s crazy easy: Head over to our new Facebook page and hit the LIKE button. Liking won’t automatically enter you, but you’ve gotta Like the page to qualify to win. Find the secret passphrase. It’s not hidden or anything — just look for our wall post about this contest. Hell, here’s the link. E-mail the secret passphrase to greg+FBContest@crunchgear.com (that’s a plus sign there in the first bit. Don’t worry — it’ll work.) Make sure you send it from an e-mail address I can respond to. ) We’ll pick 2 winners at random from those who followed the steps above on Thursday 3/31/2011 at 11:59 PM Pacific. Winners will be alerted via e-mail by Friday. Good luck! → Read More
My old friend Osama Bedier now works for Google. This is especially interesting after reports that Google has partnered up with MasterCard and CitiGroup to test out an NFC payments system. It’s also pretty interesting in light of the fact that Google recently filed for a patent for a “Distributed Electronic Commerce System With Centralized Point Of Purchase,” or what sounds like a mobile shopping cart that wraps ups all elements of a transaction into a process, goes beyond PayPal and actually collects data about what users are buying. → Read More
Bright Network, the social recruitment site, has secured £300k in investment from a consortium of angels.
They include the VC and former chairman of Sage, Michael Jackson, and Zach Miles, a former CEO of Vedior, the recruitment company that was acquired for €3.5 billion by Randstad. Both Jackson and Miles will join Bright Network’s board, while Jackson will also become Chairman. The new funding will be used to further develop the social network, marketing and to “attract additional high-quality staff”. → Read More
Archos quietly became the favorite low-cost Android tablet maker of fanboys everywhere thanks to a solid 2010 offering. The company’s Arnova brand builds upon the same formula with even cheaper tablets. The secret sauce? The bare minimum amount of internal memory. But buyers might overlook that little detail especially with the Arnova 10 shipping for only $180. → Read More
Meet Witness. Witness is the little Mac app that turns iSight into a motion-activated security camera. If an intrusion is detected, Witness will send instant alerts to users along with videos and stills to their iPhone or iPad. → Read More
Today at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman took the stage for a chat with NetworkEffect’s Liz Gannes. The main point of the discussion was Hoffman’s belief that “Web 3.0″ is data. More specifically, the platform part of data. But that’s old news, Hoffman gave that talk at SXSW a few weeks ago. More interesting were his thoughts on what Internet companies should do with their data.
Or rather, what they shouldn’t do with their data. → Read More
Ever have one of those days where every news story bugs the living shit out of you? Where your faith in humanity ebbs further away with every click? We’re having one of those days.
*Click*
“Have you seen this Tesla thing? What is wrong with them?”
*Click*
“I can’t believe people are protesting outside Twitter over this tax cut…”
*Click*
“Seriously, PETA wants to rename the Tenderloin?”
*Click*
“Wait — we have a video studio…”
And so a show was born. Welcome to the very first episode of a new regular TCTV feature: “This week in STFU”. Video below. → Read More
Andreessen Horowitz Founder/Partner Ben Horowitz took the stage today at Web 2.0 Expo SF to talk about what to invest in and what to build during a technological shift.
Comparing our current technological shift to historical technological shifts like the platform shift from mainframe to client server, the database shift from hierarchical to relational databases and then the infectious domino effect of applications, operating systems, infrastructure, networks and eventually PCs afterward, “The results of the change are bigger than the change”, Horowitz said. → Read More
This is… potentially disturbing. Mohamed Hassan recently purchased a brand-new Samsung laptop. As part of his normal setup procedure, he ran a complete scan with security software and found a keylogger installed in the Windows directory.
Hey, maybe it’s just an innocent mistake. This is my skeptical face.
Update: Debunked. No keylogger, kids. → Read More
Five days ago, we reported that Apple was gearing up to release a new build of the OS X Lion Developer Preview. Sure enough, that’s exactly what they did today as build 11A419 has been seeded to developers.
This matters for a couple of reasons. First, it’s the first update to the OS X Lion preview which many developers complained was fairly buggy. Despite the bugs, the preview went a month without any updates. More importantly, this is the build that Apple is considering to be a “GM1″ revision internally, we hear. And yes, it’s said to be much more stable and complete than the previous build. → Read More
Popular Science is a good magazine, and a popular one. With a circulation of around 1.3 million, they can afford a little iPad experiment. And while of course 10,000 subscriptions on the iPad is nothing to sneeze at, it’s still just a drop in the bucket, especially after six weeks of promotion. → Read More
It’s not every day that we see something so high-minded and, simultaneously, ham-handed. The I’m Watch (“iWatch” would have brought the wrath of Apple down with the certainty of the seasons’ change) is a “luxury” tech watch that is supposed to connect to your iPhone and preview your messages, email, and make calls. It is pure and utter buffoonery to think that this thing is worth more than $50 let alone 599 euro in Titanium and a piquant 11,999 Euro in “black gold,” really PVD-coated yellow or rose gold.
The I’m Watch is in its concept stages right now and it is my sincere hope that it stays there. → Read More
