I am still recovering from Disrupt NYC. It was our biggest event ever, and we’ll be posting more videos and highlights throughout the next few days. But here are a couple of charts that give a snapshot of the activity around the event as measured by Tweets with the event hashtag #TCDisrupt (thanks for the charts, Simply Measured).
In the chart above you can see the distribution of Tweets across the three days. That spike on Day three was related to an iPad giveaway linked to people Tweeting out the hashtag, which was Tweeted out 18,177 times (and that doesn’t include tweets that used other hashtags such as #disrupt or simply mentioned Disrupt without a hashtag).
But I particularly like the chart below, which shows the distribution of Tweets with the #TCDisrupt hashtag which also mentioned the names of the six Battlefield finalists. → Read More
We’ve gotten a lot of requests for our Disrupt conference theme music. Some conference attendees and webcast viewers apparently can’t get the music out of their heads and want to hear it some more. Instead of picking music from a music production library, this year we created custom tracks.
The music came to us all the way from New Zealand from a company called Smith & Keats Music. They have a background in creating pop hits and have earned a reputation for specializing in music for the tech industry. Other clients have included Nintendo and Sony-Ericsson.
The composers say living in New Zealand gives them exposure to a broader range of artists from around the world. In the US and other countries, the music charts are dominated by local artists. Not so for New Zealand, where they claim only the best of the best makes it to their shores. → Read More
Our obsession with our smartphones has grown into a full-blown addiction, according to a new survey in the iPass Global Mobile Workforce Report. According to iPass, one of every three mobile workers get up regularly throughout the night to check email on their phone, and nearly half of those surveyed admitted that they couldn’t sleep without a smartphone within reach. → Read More
As we’ve suspected for a long time, Apple is very close to launching an online music service which may go by the name iCloud. The basic idea is that it will mirror your iTunes collection online so that it is available on any device without clunky cable syncing.
While getting rid of those cables will be a big step forward, if iCloud is nothing more than a music locker service it won’t go far towards transforming digital music, as BusinessWeek proclaims. Apple’s iCloud will be iTunes online, with a few features that make it slightly better than Google’s Music Beta—namely, I won’t have to spend hours uploading my music collection and I will get better quality audio files for some songs. That’s all great, but I am not sure it is enough for me to pay a monthly subscription. If it’s bundled with MobileMe, it certainly would make that service more appealing, but I wouldn’t pay for iCloud as a standalone service if that is all there is to it. And certainly, this could turn out to be only one part of a revamped MobileMe service. Depending on what else will be added, iCloud could help push more MobileMe subscriptions overall. → Read More
Streaming video player developer Roku has partnered with video advertising company YuMe to allow content owners to provide video advertising for media. DreamTV and Blastro Networks are among the first Roku content providers to start using YuMe’s video advertising platform.
Roku has sold more than 1 million of its streaming entertainment devices for the TV. The company, who has not offered video advertising to publishers until now, will be integrating YuMe’s ACE technology platform, which serves more than 1 billion ad impressions per month. → Read More
Video: Pioneer’s Amazing 3D Floating Vision Display Fly Or Die: LiveScribe Connect And The T-Mobile G-Slate Google Unveils Wallet And Offers: An Open Platform For Mobile Payments Ebert Takes On The “Dim Movie Projection” Issue Polaroid’s New GL10 Instant Printer Is Available For Pre-Order, Ships In June → Read More
Best. first. quarter. evar. Some good news in today from the online advertising industry: The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has announced that online advertising revenues hit $7.3 billion in the U.S. in the first quarter. While this does not represent the best quarterly performance in history (Q4 2010 takes the cake at $7.45 billion), it does mark the best first quarter on record, and reflects a 23 percent increase since the first quarter of 2010. → Read More
I happen to be a huge fan of television on demand. Without cable, I guess I’d have to be. In fact, If I was better at keeping up with Foursquare check-ins, I’d probably be the Mayor of Netflix, and I’ve had Hulu bookmarked since its launch. But every so often, I get jealous of those who can watch “real” TV, with their commercial references and obscure made-for-television movies. But apparently, people like me won’t have to be jealous for long, as a new device has surfaced in FCC filings that gives users the ability to watch live broadcast digital television straight from the iPhone. → Read More
Google is making a bold play to enter mobile payments, and PayPal doesn’t like it one bit. Shortly after Google announced its new mobile wallet for Android phones today, Paypal filed a lawsuit against Google and two former PayPal executives who now are in charge of mobile payments at Google (Osama Bedier and Stephanie Tilenius).
The complaint (embedded below) alleges “misappropriation of trade secrets, and “breach of fiduciary duty.” It revolves around Osama Bedier, who was the VP of Platform, Mobile, and New Ventures at PayPal before he was recruited to work at Google by Android chief Andy Rubin, Google co-founder Larry Page, and Bedier’s former PayPal colleague Stephanie Tilenius (who now heads up Commerce and Payments at Google, and I interviewed yesterday onstage at Disrupt NYC).
The lawsuit reveals that Google was negotiatiating with PayPal for two years to power payments on mobile devices. But just as the deal was about to be signed, Google backed off and instead hired the PayPal executive negotiating the deal—Bedier. The lawsuit lays out the sequence of events: → Read More
The level of controversy surrounding the beautiful, yet mystical, white iPhone may have reached critical mass today. First, the launch was delayed by ten months, which peeved quite a few Apple fans, to say the least. Then, once the white iPhone finally reared its said-to-be fat head, reviewers had a field day claiming the smartphone was thicker than its black counterpart, which proved false. Today, almost a month after the phone launched, Apple sued a teenager from Queens, NY who had been selling white iPhone conversion kits. → Read More
While there’s no sign yet of the GL30 Polaroid camera introduced by Lady Gaga at CES, the GL10 printer is actually nearing a shipping date. This little printer connects to your computer or smartphone and produces 3×4″ prints in about 45 seconds. The paper is probably going to be super expensive, but hey. It costs $169 and the website says it should ship in June. We’ll see what we can do about getting it reviewed before then. → Read More
Rumors have been flying around the web lately about when we’ll get a chance to check out Microsoft’s forthcoming tablet software, and according to Bloomberg sources and Business Insider, Windows chief Steve Sinofsky will unveil the latest Windows tablet OS at the AllThingsDigital D:9 conference next week. → Read More
You’ve probably read about how some theaters are neglecting to take off the lenses made for 3D films when showing other movies, and the result is a dim, muddy movie. There are a number of reasons for this, but the end is always the same, and Roger Ebert is fed up with it. He breaks down the issue and laments the state of theaters and projectors in this interesting blog post. The take-away? If the movie looks bad, ask them to fix it or get your money back. Only the customers can keep theaters honest. → Read More
It seems that Alcatel, budget-friendly feature phone and smartphone maker, has decided to enter the tablet race under its OneTouch brand name. We spotted the (approximately) 7-inch slate as it received approval from the FCC earlier today, and as far as we can tell, the Alcatel OneTouch T60 is shaping up to be a smart-looking product for the first-time tablet maker. → Read More
Do you need some freaking cable? Yeah you do, you know it! Where do you get it? Duh? Like the cable store! Like the cable store called CableSupply. So these dudes, in order to form a more perfect cable experience, are offering free shipping on orders of $99 or more. Bang. You’re like “Cables? Where do I go for cables?” and they’re like “Durrrrr… Here!” → Read More
The chief executive officers of two very different clean tech startups, Brammo and EcoMotors, discussed the relative merits and limitations of clean vehicle technology, at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York on Wednesday. Oregon-based Brammo designs and manufactures all-electric motorcycles and the battery technology and software that powers them, while Michigan-based EcoMotors designs and makes more efficient combustion engines.
EcoMotors’ CEO Don Runkle roundly criticized clean tech advocates who say all-electric vehicles (EVs) are “zero emissions.” Causing a bit of a stir in the conference hall, Runkle, the former VP of engineering at GM, went on to claim that EcoMotors’ engine technology enables car companies to produce diesel-powered vehicles that have a lower, overall carbon footprint than any electric automobile available today.
Given that electric vehicles don’t produce diesel exhaust, and don’t use fossil fuels, how can this be…? → Read More
It’s probably not a good sign that I’m this excited about an email widget, but there you go.
Google has just announced that it’s rolling out a new feature over the next week called the People Widget — a small sidebar to the right of email messages that features contextual information about the people you’re interacting with in Gmail. I don’t have the feature active yet so I’m going by the screenshots provided, but it looks like the widget includes each person’s job title, recent email exchanges you’ve had with them, photo, calendar availability, and shared Google Docs. It also includes Buzz updates (hopefully Twitter integration is coming as well).
If you only exchange a handful of messages a day then this probably isn’t a game changer for you, but if you’re constantly having to deal with a flurry of projects and hundreds of contacts, then it could be a godsend. Of course, Google actually isn’t the first company to offer contextually relevant information within Gmail (strange as that may sound). Startups like Rapportive and Xobni have created browser widgets that offer similar functionality. → Read More
Twitter has just rolled out a nifty little feature. Now on anyone’s profile, when click on the “Following” link, you’ll be able to see exactly how they see Twitter. In other words, you can see the same timeline of tweets that they see when they’re looking at their main feed.
It’s a cool feature that makes sense from a discovery standpoint. If you know I’m a power Twitter user that probably follows a bunch of good people, you can now quickly scan the tweets those people send out and see which ones you want to follow. It’s sort of like what News.me is doing for news stories shared via Twitter links. → Read More
We’re here at Google’s massive HQ in New York City (they own an entire block) for what Google was calling a “partner event” but everyone knew was really an “NFC event”. Sure enough, Stephanie Tilenius, Google’s VP of Commerce, has taken the stage to announce Google Wallet and Google Offers.
Right off the bat, Tilenius wanted to make it clear that this would be an open platform. She invited “payment networks, carriers, banks, join us in creating tomorrow’s shopping experience”. And some of those partners are already on board. Citi, Mastercard, FirstData, and Sprint are the initial partners. → Read More
Earlier this week we gave you a little sneak peek at the new Livescribe Connect service but we also looked a bit more closely at the T-Mobile G-Slate, Big Fuchsia’s wild 3D tablet. Erick was generally nonplussed with both products but this is the year of the Android tablet and this is one of the most unique devices we’ve seen this year.
We ran a review of the G-Slate a few weeks ago and talked about the Connect announcement on Monday. → Read More
