The backstory of last year’s film Tron: Legacy picks up where the first film left off. Kevin Flynn teams up with Tron to create a new Grid, one meant for programs and users. But Flynn realizes that he can’t be in the system working on this constructed world all the time, so he creates another program, CLU, to help with the effort. Together, the three of them work on creating this… → Read More
Professional social network LinkedIn has priced its IPO at $45 per share, according to a release issued on the company’s site. This is at the high end of the range, which was estimated at $42 to $45 per share yesterday. This puts the company’s valuation at $4.5 billion.
As we wrote yesterday, the company originally stated the price per share range as $32 and $35 but increased this by 30 percent… → Read More
Yeesh! It seems like Virgin Mobile changes up their Broadband2Go plans about as often as I change pants*. First they launched a $40 Unlimited plan, and got rid of almost all of their lesser plans. Then they bailed on the $40 plan, and introduced a whacky 10-day-or-100 MB plan for $10 a pop. Then they introduced a new, unlimited-ish (speeds are throttled after 2.5 GB) plan for $50 a month. The… → Read More
It’s pretty safe to say that there’s a new MacBook Air somewhere down the pipe. Apple refreshes their notebooks a couple times year. Often the changes are just slight spec bumps, but as was the case with the MacBook Air back in October, others are more dramatic. → Read More
E-commerce platform company Rearden Commerce has appointed former Nokia CFO Rick Simonson as its new chief financial officer and president of business operations. Simonson is known for serving as Nokia’s CFO for six years before taking over leadership of the company’s Mobile Phones business in November 2009 – and for quitting less than six months after his appointment.
Simonson is also the man… → Read More
Exclusive – U.S.-based mobile games developer ngmoco was acquired by Japanese social games publisher DeNA in October 2010, but that doesn’t mean it stopped looking at opportunities to grow through acquisitions of its own, particularly in regions other than Asia and the United States.
TechCrunch has learned that the company has just acquired longtime game development partner Rough Cookie to boost… → Read More
Some GPS units are meant for rugged work in the mountains while others rarely leave the comforts of the city. The just-announced Garmin Montana can do both. Not only is it powerful, but it’s rugged and features various mounting options for different usages including windshield and dash. There’s a 4-inch dual-orientation screen and even a 5MP autofocus camera. It’s powered by either a 16-hour LiON… → Read More
WaterSmart Software, a green tech startup that’s frequently compared to the energy management startup OPower has closed a $900,000 round of seed financing led by Menlo Incubator and joined by Sand Hill Angels, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Physic Ventures.
The company’s co-founder Peter Yolles explained the concept of the technology in an interview with TechCrunch ahead of the funding… → Read More
Yahoo has just announced that it will be acquiring advertising platform 5to1 for $28 million. We originally broke the news of the acquisition last week.
5to1 first launched at TechCrunch50 in September 2009, and raised around $13 million in various rounds of funding. The startup is an online advertising alliance consisting of major media publishers. Built on a proprietary publisher-controlled… → Read More
Many of you, I’m sure, weren’t too pleased to hear yesterday’s news that 99 percent of Android phones are susceptible to impersonation attacks. The bad news: Google has confirmed that the problem does exist. The good news: Google is also fixing the problem, starting today, and it shouldn’t require any action on your part. → Read More
Exclusive – Amsterdam-based startup Silk, which offers a platform that allows content creators to distribute their work on the Web in a more structured manner, has raised €320,000 (approximately $475,000) in early-stage funding from Atomico and a number of individual angel investors, TechCrunch has learned.
Silk, which was originally founded back in 2009, will use the proceeds to finally bring… → Read More
One of my favorite parts about a trip to the Apple store is when my blue-shirted employee checks me out with his iPod touch-based EasyPay Terminal. It’s quick, requires little to no effort on my part, and it’s just plain cool. Well, it looks like Apple employees will be turning in their iPod touches for the iPad 2, as Apple stores have received dozens of iPad 2s with magnetic Smart Covers… → Read More
The case design is based on the iconic Admirals’ Cup collection that Corum has been pushing lately. They have transformed the sport watch into a formal watch – and the metamorphosis feels natural. The case has that 12 sided shape and comes in steel or 18k rose gold. The bezel is polished while much of the rest of the case is brushed. There is just enough sport to the design to make it feel not… → Read More
As an adult man, you have many responsibilities and one of those responsibilities is to look great. How can you look great? By carrying a USB key with exposed traces shaped to look like a Piranha Plant, that’s how. And how much does this magical product cost? $9.99. Just cheap enough for today’s man to look really classy and not force said man to skip lunch at the Pizza Hut buffet. → Read More
Some charming youngsters from Cornell have created a fairly simple and effective face matching system using a webcam, a little LCD read-out, and a tiny Atmel ATmega644 8-bit microcontroller running a set of Eigenface tests on the face in question. The system is 88% accurate with no false positives. It is almost completely self-contained and is small and simple enough to add to a front door lock or… → Read More
All I wanna do is xooma-xoom-xoom! The Xoom was overclocked to 1.5GHz shortly after its US release. Now, thanks to a recompiled version of Tiamat 1.4.2, Moto’s Honeycomb tab hit 1.6GHz. That added clock speed was enough to earn the overclocked Xoom over 4000 points in the benchmark app, Quadrant. My stock 3.1 Xoom only scored 1500. Of course the faster clock speed also kills the battery and… → Read More
Netcycler, the online swapping site, has seen its UK launch. Up until now the service, which is a European competitor to US-based Swap.com, has been available in Finland first in March 2010, followed by Germany a few months later.
As of this month, however, Brits can use the site to start recycling unwanted items for things they do want – and apparently we’re pretty good at doing the former. → Read More
From the way that OEMs are rushing to get ahead in the slate race, you’d think that tablets were just about as ubiquitous as our beloved smartphones. But according to Nielsen, that is not the case, whatsoever. In fact, only about 5 percent of the 12,000 U.S. consumers surveyed own a tablet. → Read More
BERLIN– Yesterday at the Next 11 conference, I interviewed Rovio’s Mighty Eagle Peter Vesterbacka on stage. You may know him as the man who brings us all different versions of Angry Birds, Angry Birds toys, possibly an Angry Birds movie, and– as you’ll see in the clip below– an Angry Birds line of hoodies.
He has a big announcement: Angry Birds downloads have topped 200 million. To put that in… → Read More
Another day, another PSN hack. This time we face a problem with the password reset page that users must face in order to log back in. However, given that the hackers stole everyone’s user accounts in the first place, the security measures put in place to ensure that no one can assign you a new password – namely entering your email address and birthdate – are nullified. Therefore, anyone with that… → Read More
Many have talked about the explosion of tech startups in the East of London, which has come to be known colloquially as “Silicon Roundabout“. But who are they? We’ve been writing about the emerging tech cluster there since it’s first stirrings in 2008, so we’ve decided to start documenting them for TechCrunch TV. And with the help of our video crew in the shape of producer (and startup founder… → Read More
Verizon’s big red flag seems to be transforming into one of revolt, as the carrier has chosen to follow up its recent Net Neutrality suit against the FCC with another one. This time, the Federal Communications Commission’s new data roaming rules are in the carrier’s crosshairs, as the new regulation would benefit regional carriers and their customers while doing virtually nothing to benefit… → Read More
Twitter has just announced that it will be drilling down on the third party app permissions, and will be taking away automatic OAuth access to Direct Messages for apps that need it. As of today Twitter clients that need access your direct messages will ask you for permission to access them. Apps that no longer need access will no longer have access. → Read More
ShareMyPlaylists, the music social network built on top of Spotify with the specific purpose of sharing playlists, has landed on the iPad. Interestingly, this is before the European music streaming service has its own dedicated app for Apple’s tablet.
That’s perhaps a little odd (or preemptive) considering how closely the two services are tied, although ShareMyPlaylists founder Kieron Donoghue… → Read More
Zynga is continuing its shopping spree today with the acquisition of social game developer DNA Games, marking its 14th acquisition in the past 12 months. It’s important to note that this is an actual acquisition of both the talent and company, as opposed to the recent ‘acq-hires’ Zynga has been making in the past few months. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
DNA Games was founded in… → Read More
Rather than waste your entire morning forcing you to read two iPad 2 case reviews (I think I could barely read one at a sitting, but but these are important enough to look at more closely), I’ve decided to mush together two reviews into one megareview, the way Voltron is made up of multiple robots. To that end, I present to you an assessment of the Speck Pixelskin HD Wrap and their recently… → Read More
The Next conference in Berlin is an international, English language conference covering of the latest in “digital”, and serves as a useful platform for German startups to present themselves. One of the best – and the one that won the startup competition this year – was Wahwah.fm. I actually really liked this company, but the downbeat presentation of its founder belies quite an innovative idea. → Read More
SkyGrid, a startup that offers a powerful business news aggregator, has upgraded its iPhone and iPad app with a number of new social and interactive features today.
SkyGrid’s app allows you to add filters to news streams, with the aim of giving you the most important news right as it’s happening. Using the startup’s patented algorithm, Information Velocity; SkyGrid measures what news is… → Read More
Online ticket seller Eventbrite has raised another $50 million in a Series E financing round led by Tiger Global, according to a release issued by the company. This infusion comes only eight months after the company raised $20 million in funding last October. This latest investment brings the company’s total funding to $80 million.
To date, Eventbrite has helped over 120,000 event organizers in… → Read More
Oh boy! Don your Who Gives A Poop trucker hat and let’s look at a video! This video is said to be from a super secret Nintendo developer’s meeting and right there, under the screen might just be the Wii 2 — or, as the Internet heard it’s called internally, Project Café. More interesting than the device is the PowerPoint action. One slide shows the massive rumored controller and then another… → Read More
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