The economy is a mess. And while venture capital is still flowing like whiskey during the Prohibition, it’s not right for every business. A year ago we wrote about the birth of a new type of investment fund, Revenue Loan. The experiment has worked, says founder Andy Sack. They’re expanding it, changing their name, and offering $500,000 to the right type of startup.
First, the basics. Revenue… → Read More
This almost sounds too good to be true: a Japanese company called TIS&Partners [JP] has developed a new kind of construction material that’s supposedly “better” than concrete (by some measures, at least). Dubbed “CO2 Structure”, the material hardens in about a day, as opposed to the 28 days it takes for concrete to cure to 100% of its strength. → Read More
Sony Japan announced [JP] the ESSP-2000, a storage battery for professional use that serves as a backup power supply unit in the case of emergencies and blackouts. The lithium ion battery stores 2.4kwh, can be charged to 95% in about 2 hours (using conventional power plugs), and it boasts an impressive life span of over 10 years, according to Sony. → Read More
Every once in a while, we interrupt our regular live coverage of breaking news about Internet companies from around the world to highlight amazing photography. In 2009, we featured the world’s largest spherical photo, and earlier this year, the world’s largest photo ever taken indoors.
Today, 360Cities published a series of historical 360° photos of Hiroshima, taken six months after the Boeing… → Read More
Much has been made about Apple’s recent changes to the iOS terms. At first, everyone was sure that many big players would be forced to pull their apps, such as Amazon’s popular Kindle app. But then Apple relaxed the rules a bit, and simply said that Amazon and others couldn’t link to their own stores from their iOS apps. Amazon complied. But at the same time, they were also working on an… → Read More
“We are not trying to redefine the textbook,” Kno CEO Osman Rashid tells me, “we are trying to redefine how you learn.” Today, Kno is taking a big steps towards making digital textbooks more social by making 100,000 college textbooks available both on its Website and on Facebook. The Textbooks for Facebook app and site will present the books via an HTML5 reader. So students who buy a book via … → Read More
Silicon Valley survivor Jay Adelson has worn many hats in his two decades in the technology space: Equinix co-founder, Digg CEO, Simple Geo CEO and Revision 3 Co-Founder among others. His latest hat? Talk show host. → Read More
If you’re going to go through all the trouble of streamlining your Topic pages and creating Topic Groups, you might as well develop an over-arching way to get your users psyched about Topics. Quora Browse, a beautifully redesigned Browse page that is once again an effort to prevent this type of user confusion surrounding ways to get to the content they care about. → Read More
As is befitting a global technology empire, Apple seems to always have a great number of patents in moderation. The latest batch is an interesting mix, with the standout patents hailing from as far back as 2007 or as recently as 2010. The current ruckus surrounding the patent system isn’t going to die down any time soon, so I’ll try not to editorialize too much here, but some of these do seem a… → Read More
Facebook did a strange thing today: they released a mobile application separate from their main app. They’ve never done this before. But it’s genius. And it’s yet another long-term thorn in the side of SMS.
Facebook Messenger is a stand-alone app for iOS and Android. It essentially merges the Beluga product that Facebook acquired in February with their revamped Messages product. Now it makes… → Read More
We’ve heard our share of app store woes in recent weeks, but here’s one that’s unfortunately still in progress. A number of Android app developers have been claiming on the Android Market support forum that the amount of money they’re being paid doesn’t match up with the number of apps they have actually sold.
Not much has been heard from Google, and the devs are getting restless. → Read More
Researchers at Cornell University are hard at work on a project that sounds odd at first, but is in fact a perfectly natural extension of existing 3D and computing technology. They’re making an engine for producing the sounds of colliding objects by simulating the materials of the objects themselves in a virtual space, and then calculating the forces and vibrations that would be produced. → Read More
Twitter images, the Twitter photo hosting service we broke the news of in May, has now rolled out to all Twitter users, according to Twitter Public Relations representative Sean Garrett.
Users who did not have the feature before will see a camera at the far left of their status update, beckoning that they upload an image. You can choose an image from your desktop under 3 MB and it will get… → Read More
Just a couple days ago, we heard about Intel’s plans to offer a new reference bill of materials for their “ultrabook” class of laptops. Essentially it’s a new blueprint with the aim of putting these new thin-but-powerful laptops (if they ever appear) under a thousand dollars — putting them in direct competition with the 2.38-pound gorilla of the laptop world, Apple’s MacBook Air.
A new… → Read More
Not everyone agrees with Nicholas Carr that the Internet is wrecking our brains. Take, for example, UCLA Brain Research Institute professor Dean Buonomano, the author of Brain Bugs: How the Brain’s Flaws Shape Our Lives. While Buonomano accepts that there is a “price to be paid” for the benefits of the Internet, he believes that our brains will eventually adapt to real-time networks like… → Read More
Well, now you may have two Facebook-related apps to download to your iPhone today. The first is Facebook Messenger, a new standalone app that lets you jump straight into your Facebook Messages. And the second is MyPad.
MyPad, for those who haven’t used it before, is a third-party Facebook application that includes many of the site’s core features, but is optimized for the iOS interface. The… → Read More
The Vizio Tablet is finally here after its initial debut at CES. Vizio wants desperately to control your home theater experience and the company’s new Android tablet is an integral part of that, acting as the central hub of Vizio’s V.I.A. (Video Internet Apps) Plus ecosystem. Acronyms aside, this means that Vizio’s HDTVs and its tablets will share the same interface and apps, keeping things… → Read More
If you were thinking of dumping that old laptop, hold on a second. Apple has just updated its trade-in policy, and you can now bring in any Apple product, as well as any desktop or laptop, for free recycling or even store credit. Yes, any desktop or laptop, including PCs — and it won’t cost you a dime. → Read More
Online group buying startup Groupalia has secured another $26 million in financing, bringing total capital raised to roughly $63 million, after landing a $15 million capital injection earlier this year.
The company, which has growing operations all over Latin America as well as in Spain and Italy, has raised the fresh capital from all its existing shareholders: Nauta Capital, Caixa Capital Risc… → Read More
Yesterday, following Robin Wauters announcement that he is “quitting” phone calls (which came hot on the heels of MG’s experiment in curtailing email use), Paul declared that he was quitting breathing.
How did the experiment go? See the video below, in which he and Sarah discuss the curious trend of pundits abandoning technology and ask whether communications overload is really a problem, or… → Read More
As you probably know, I hate email. But I love Sparrow. And I love Shortmail. The two services are attempting to alleviate the pain that is email is two different ways. Sparrow makes email pretty. Shortmail makes email short. Today, the two are teaming up.
The latest version of Sparrow (1.3.2) which has just gone live in the Mac App Store now includes support for Shortmail. It needs to be set… → Read More
Web content giant Demand Media is announcing a number of acquisitions and a renewal of its Google ad deal today. First, Demand says that it is renewing and expanding its advertising partnership with Google. Under the terms of the three year agreement, Demand will continue to monetize its properties via AdSense for Content and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange.
The company says Demand has extended… → Read More
We’ve teased you with this news over and over again, but today it becomes official: TechCrunch is coming to China.
In late-October we are hosting our first international Disrupt conference ever, and the obvious location was Beijing, the hub of China’s surging entrepreneurial ecosystem.
And we’re not stopping there. → Read More
One issue I’ve had with Android superphones, with their dual cores and their gigawhats, is that there just isn’t much of a use for them. Android apps are mostly made for the lowest common denominator, hardware-wise, and aside from a few 3D games and cool (but impractical) HD video playback, you can’t really use those extra cycles for anything without really diving into device customization. We… → Read More
If you were to sit down and look at all the devices Nokia has for sale in the United States, you may come away thinking that they weren’t in the business of making impressive devices. With only a few exceptions, Nokia’s domestic offerings are low-end, S40-powered talk-and-texters — hardly what one would expect from the self-proclaimed “world leader” of the cell phone industry. → Read More
Windows 7 is now the most prevalent – if not most popular – desktop OS with Gartner estimating that 42% of current PCs will run the OS while 94% of new machines will run Win7.
In comparison, OS X got 4% of the pie while Linux is firmly at 2%. Even IT departments are starting massive roll-outs of Win7 to their desktops, a move that has pushed the fairly new OS into the car bird seat. However… → Read More
Sully Taylor, Creative Director for Teens in Tech Labs and Founder & CEO at Sully Creative, has released a Google+ application for Mac users. The app is a very simple one, however. “Just a ported browser,” he says, “not a native app.”
Yes, we know that you can use Fluid.app to do pretty much the same thing – that is, if you prefer to do the work yourself. But Taylor says Fluid won’t be… → Read More
3D is a polarizing topic, whether it’s in TV, movies, or games. I think it’s interesting (which is why I wrote this extremely long article about it), but I’ll also be the first to admit that adoption was never going to happen quickly. People just don’t buy TVs frequently enough — not to mention the fact that there were no benefits to early adoption, but plenty of drawbacks. That said, it’s… → Read More
Back in February Facebook acquired Beluga, a hot group messaging startup well known for having a killer 3-person team. At the time, fellow TC writer MG Siegler wondered aloud whether Facebook would release a standalone messaging app (which is what Beluga is), or if it had plans to work the technology and team into its recently-revamped Messages product, which it unveiled last fall.
Today, we’ve… → Read More
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