Among the 16 new patents granted to Apple this week by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, was this fairly interesting one describing a solar-powered charging system for electronic devices. The patent details a system that includes a voltage converter and controller that would work alongside a solar power source. → Read More
We’ve been talking about Cadence for a while now and I got the chance to sit down with Vanya Buvac, founder of the company watches and creator of some nice, inexpensive timepieces (including the dirty, dirty 4:20 watch). The company started when the founder wanted to build a “cadence” sensing watch for rowing. Based near Philadelphia’s Boathouse Row, the first Cadence watch (the heavy quartz LCD model near the top of the picture above) had a built-in weight that sensed your strokes per minute. Their latest model, the Josh Chadwick, has a quartz LCD face and is clad in brushed metal and will come with either a black or silver bezel. My favorite is the relatively inexpensive Ecomatic, an automatic watch sold for under $195. Vanya is a big fan of geeks (as evidenced by his 4-Bit model) and, apparently, heshers. Generally it’s hard to find an American watch brand with such a dedicated CEO and, or important, fan base. Product Page → Read More
Another day, another technology company files for an IPO. After Jive and Angie’s List, customer reviews company Bazaarvoice has filed its S-1 with the SEC today. The company aims to raise as much as $86.25 million in its offering.
The Austin, TX- based Bazaarvoice, provides a SaaS that powers customer reviews platforms and other social commerce features on brand web sites like Best Buy, Blue Shield of California, Costco, Dell, Macy’s, P&G, Panasonic, and QVC. The company serves as a online reviews engine of sorts, aggregating customer reviews from the web, Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms. The company also syndicates retailer’s product reviews to shopping comparison engines. To date, Bazaarvoice has raised $20 million in funding from Battery Ventures, First Round Capital and others. → Read More
Auto maker General Motors and LG Group will be working together to design and engineer electric vehicles thanks to a new partnership that expands on LG’s earlier work for GM in lithium-ion batteries. Previously, LG delivered batteries for the Chevrolet Volt, the Opel Ampera, and later for a demo fleet of Chevrolet Cruze electric vehicles.
According to the companies, their goal is to reduce both the cost and the time it takes to build electric cars.
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Cloud solution provider Appirio this morning announced it will be expanding internationally to more adequately serve its customers in the European and Asia Pacific markets.
The expansion, which the company says will be through a combination of organic and inorganic growth, is being funded by a strategic investment from two existing investors: VC firm GGV Capital and partner Salesforce.com. → Read More
When a man is proud of his hobbies, women notice. Nowhere is that more apparent than in this thread on RCGroups where a dapper young gent, from the comfort of his lounge chair and protected by VR goggles, approached a comely young lass with his RC Tonka truck and, we can only assume, married that same lady in a ceremony held under a sylvan glade alongside her beaming parents.
Or maybe not.
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Sometimes futuristic-looking prototypes of gadgets do get commercialized: Brother has announced it is ready to bring to market the so-called AiRScouter, a head-mounted and transparent transmissive liquid crystal display that was first showcased back in 2008. When worn, the device creates the impression of a 16-inch screen that’s about one meter away from user’s eyes.
Brother says they inked a deal with NEC, which will use the technology for their wearable computer Tele Scouter starting in the fall. The company expects the Air Scouter to be used in device assembly, parts picking and selection, and remote operations in factories. → Read More
Google TV soft launched in the US last September with the Logitech Revue and Sony Internet TV products. Google however is reportedly working on bringing the system to the UK and per a Telegraph report sourcing Eric Schmidt, the fun starts within the next six months. Thankfully, UK buyers don’t exactly have to start saving their quids since both product lines recently got major price cuts.
Google TV hasn’t been a major hit here in the States. It hasn’t, as it was predicted, disrupted big media. Instead, big media shut off access to its online streaming services such as Hulu.com and others, essentially leaving the Google TV as an expensive Netflix streamer. Google has long said that a major update would hit before the end of summer, which will hopefully put the platform back on track. → Read More
Clear your morning, friend. If you have any respect at all for computer gaming, you’re going to watch these these two Counter Strike: Global Offensive videos over and over and over again. I did.
What we have here, or rather, what the videos display, is an updated version of Counter Strike that won’t sit well with those looking for a Call of Duty competitor. This is updated version is clearly meant just for Counter Strike players by offering nothing more than updated graphics, physics and game UI. The sounds and gameplay seem untouched. This is a welcomed change in a world where games are seemingly designed just for Xbox Live 12-year olds. Click through for both videos. → Read More
Personal Capital came out of stealth mode today to “create a new model for financial services” and announced that it has raised a total of $25 million in venture financing. The financing includes a Series A round led by Institutional Venture Partners and a Series B round led by Venrock with IVP also investing again. → Read More
Yandex, one of the leading Internet companies in Russia, has acquired startup venture The Tweeted Times, which enables people to create custom online ‘newspapers’ generated from their Twitter accounts. Financial terms of the purchase were not disclosed, but Yandex says it aims to continue offering the social news service and that the entire The Tweeted Times team will be joining the search engine company.
The Tweeted Times was co-founded by Maxim Grinev and Maria Grineva, both computer scientists at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and others. → Read More
One key element for the success of electric vehicles going forward is charging technology, but we’re getting there. Kyoto-based Nichicon has now developed what they say are the world’s smallest and chargers for these vehicles, the NQC-A202 and the NQC-A302. → Read More
Y Combinator had its semiannual demo day earlier this week, where many of the 63 startups in this batch showed their stuff to investors and press for the first time. It was the largest demo day so far. And they did the same show two days in a row so more people could come.
What struck me about the day wasn’t that so many companies were launching, or how awesome more than a few of them were. Unlike most events like this, the audience wasn’t mostly paying attention to their phone or laptop or tablet. It was more like the audience at a movie theater – quietly watching with their full attention. People like Marc Andreessen, Roelof Botha, Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Ron Conway and others there, too. And people didn’t flock to them like they usually do. It was all about the new companies.
It hasn’t always been like this. Just a few years ago when I started TechCrunch new startups launching tended to do it in my living room or back yard during one of the monthly parties at my house. I’m being quite serious – see this old post, for example. That’s my living room, and those pictures show companies launching right there. Once the parties got too big we moved to other venues – the last one had 600 people and my house was a wreck afterwards. Someone was coding on top of my washing machine, and a very stoned VC was passed out on my couch because he couldn’t find his car keys (turned out they were in his pocket, but we searched my yard with flashlights for an hour). → Read More
I sat down last night to write about Steve Jobs’ resignation as Apple CEO and something funny happened: I had nothing to say. This is not normal for me. I don’t get writer’s block. I often write thousands of words about what many would consider the minutia of tech. And yet, when it came to writing about one of the biggest stories we’re ever likely to see in this space, a story that far transcends tech, I was quite literally at a loss for words.
So instead I read what everyone else had to say. Some articles were excellent, many were very good, others read far too much like obituaries. More came today. I kept reading. Slowly, two things struck me. First, I’ve never seen anything quite like the outpouring of emotion that people are showing in response to this news. Second, what we’re witnessing right now is Jobs’ final masterstroke. → Read More
Here are some of yesterday’s Gadgets stories: → Read More
Turntable.fm is so hot right now. In fact, when it comes to tweets, the synchronous social music platform may even have more Klout than Pandora or Spotify. With the rise in popularity of Turntable, it’s only natural that video curation platforms would be eager to take a cue from the music dance party site and bring that disco to videos.
Two weeks ago, we covered the launch of Chill, which in concept is almost a direct analogue of Turntable.fm for videos, except that in the case of Chill, there are “Lounges” as opposed to the DJ rooms of Turntable. A stretch, I know. Of course, when it comes to social video experiences, there’s Socialcam and Google+, which both let you watch videos with your friends online, but there’s so much more potential here for interactivity, as shown by Turntable.
ShortForm, the year-and-half-old startup that launched to help video fanatics create personalized channels of web video content, also recently took to the synchronous, social video experience, as it recently launched its Live Video Parties integration, which allows video jockeys to broadcast video content to a live audience. → Read More
Because we needed more big tech news this week. Yes, it’s true that Google has just brought the hammer down on Slide, as Liz Gannes of AllThingsD first reported earlier this evening. Yes, it’s also true that Max Levchin is leaving. Now we also know the fate of all of the Slide products. And it’s not pretty.
All of them are being discontinued — except one, we’ve learned. This means both the Slide products before Google’s acquisition of the company a year ago, and the newer ones that the Slide team has been building within Google for the past year. Yes, it includes the newer products like Disco, Pool Party, Video Inbox, and the just-launched-last-week Photovine. They’re all dead. → Read More
Mitchell Feinberg is a photographer who specializes in taking beautiful photographs of very expensive things. Cars, luxury goods, wristwatches, that sort of thing. He shoots on 8×10 film, which is expensive enough that you generally want to get it right the first time. So he shoots test shots on instant 8×10 Polaroid film to make sure the exposure and focus are right. At $15 a pop, 7 or 8 test shots per photo, and dwindling supplies of the Polaroid film itself (though the Impossible Project is looking to remake it), it became evident to Feinberg that he couldn’t continue doing things that way.
So what did he do? No, he didn’t buy a Leaf or Hasselblad. He decided he’d commission the world’s biggest color digital back. → Read More
One of the most common complaints critics (and competitors) have against Google is that the company — despite its numerous open products and initiatives — is very secretive about the countless algorithms that power its crown jewels, Google Search. In other words, search is a black box. Google’s argument has generally been that it needs to be this way — if it told everyone exactly how the algorithm worked, then it would be much easier to game, and search results would suffer.
In any case there’s plenty of mystery around Search, which is why the video posted today to the Google blog is so interesting: Google has given a quick video walk-through detailing how its engineers gradually adjust the algorithm, which — according to the video — gets tweaked more than 500 times per year.
The video is only four minutes long and is worth watching in its entirely, but here’s a quick rundown on how a change to search goes live: → Read More
Back in February of 2010, Microsoft applied for a number of patents related to touchscreen gestures on a tablet. Many of them concern a dual-screen device, conjuring images of the once highly-anticipated Courier slate. The others focus mainly on bezel gestures. Those patents have gone public now, though they have not in fact been granted yet.
With IP wars raging across the globe, it’s certainly worth taking a look at the technology that Microsoft is attempting to lay claim to. So off we go… → Read More
