Fans of marginalia: Take note. Subtext is a startup that is attempting to bring those incisive notes (or sophomoric jokes) you used to leave in the margins of textbooks or your favorite fiction online — and make them interactive. Subtext is bringing a new social eBook reading experience to the iPad.
If you’ve ever paid the extra cost for a fuller music listening experience, a behind-the-scenes look at the band, a DVD, etc., then you can probably get a sense of what Subtext is trying to do with reading. Except that the startup wants to offer an enhanced reading experience that, while adding neat additions and sidenotes, author commentary, and Web connectedness (for free) — doesn’t distract from the reading experience. → Read More
These are bittersweet days for Tony Fadell. The man who oversaw 18 generations of the iPod and the first three versions of the iPhone is finally launching his new company, Nest Labs, today. It has been eighteen months in the making and marks a new era for thermostats– and quite possibly other neglected categories of home electronics.
But he’s also recently lost his former boss and long time friend Steve Jobs. In this final segment of our sit-down interview with Fadell, he talks about the Steve Jobs he knew. He also talks about the future for Apple, and what he hopes Apple’s legacy will be for entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.
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Even if you read our story earlier tonight on iPod Godfather Tony Fadell’s new company Nest Labs and its new Learning Thermostat, you may still be wondering how anyone could make a thermostat an object of beauty. So we sat down with Fadell to get a video demo of the device that brought him out of retirement and has been eighteen months in the making.
True to the Apple aesthetic it’s one big dial you can spin and push to control a sophisticated array of features.
It’ll be the first thermostat marketed directly to consumers. Can they get excited enough to plunk down a couple hundred dollars? My husband and I are finally putting a new heating system in our drafty San Francisco Victorian. After this demo, I was sold. How about you? → Read More
You’ve probably seen the new Apple Siri commercial with people talking to their iPhones like they would to a personal assistant because, well, it is a personal assistant. It sets up meetings, reminds you to do things, shows you how to tie a bow tie. Well, Team Coco at Conan O’Brien had a little fun re-imagining the commercial with what looks like two guys from Brooklyn.
Yeah, you pretty much know what they are going to ask: “How far am I right now from diarrhea town?” → Read More
For the last eighteen months, the tech world has been anxiously awaiting news of what iPod godfather Tony Fadell is up to. His staff has been sworn to secrecy since word got out he was leaving retirement to do something new. Despite reporters camping out in front of his office with cameras, the news somehow stayed a secret– no small feat in the ever-leaky land of Silicon Valley.
No doubt the anticipation raised expectations in fan boys’ minds that the next great entertainment or communication device was going to be unveiled by the former DJ who oversaw 18 versions of the iPod and the first three versions of the iPhone.
Fadell is well aware that those fan boys may be in for some confusion or some disappointment today. Because he’s announcing what finally got him to come out of retirement and start a new company: A desire to reinvent thermostats. → Read More
Enterprise I.T. company GroupLogic is today unveiling the latest update to its mobilEcho Mobile File Management (MFM) service with the launch of mobilEcho 3.0. Most importantly, the new version now adds support for the iPhone, in addition to the previously supported iPad. And the company says it will have support for Android by next quarter. → Read More
Back in 2009, TechCrunch Founder Michael Arrington wrote that CNET (and parent company CBS) were sniffing around gdgt, the then-brand-new community/review site/blog by Peter Rojas and Ryan Block. While CNET was considering an investment at the time, an acquisition was said not to be an option.
Oh, how time can change things. Two years later, we’re not only hearing that CNET is now in talks to acquire gdgt, but also that the deal could be announced as early as this week. → Read More
Hackers, are you ready? The Disrupt Beijing Hackathon is almost here. Not only is this our fifth time hosting the Hackathon at TechCrunch Disrupt, but it is our very first time hosting it overseas. The Hackathon has become an incredibly popular event, where hackers of every stripe come together to build cool products and businesses — from funny to useful, from bizarre to essential. The goal of the Hackathon is to push innovation forward.
What’s more, ALL hackers who finish their hacks AND present in the 24-hour allotted time period will get FREE tickets to Disrupt Beijing!
而且, 所有完成并且在24小时中展示所做项目的程序员将获得Disrupt北京大会的免费门票！
We have been lucky enough to receive support from some amazing companies. These companies will be helping hackers by hosting their own API platforms, providing educational workshops, and offering exciting prizes from their own contests. Make sure to check out the contests and prizes below, and make sure to get your ticket soon! It’s our first Hackathon overseas and one you don’t want to miss. → Read More
Open data platform Factual.com is launching a new API for developers of location-based services called Resolve. The API is an entity resolution API that makes partial records complete, matches entities against one other and assists in the process of de-duping and normalizing datasets.
What this means is that developers can simply tell Factual what they know about an entity (i.e., a venue in a place database) and it will fill in the missing pieces (e.g., the category, the latitude/longitude info and venue’s address). At launch, Resolve will be available only for Factual’s list of U.S. Places, but the company hopes to expand Resolve globally in the future. → Read More
On October 10th, one of the longest running tech rumors in recent memory finally came to fruition: Facebook released its own, official iPad application. The app had been in high demand since the day the iPad first launched (Facebook’s iPhone app is, after all, among the platform’s most popular of all time). But there was no iPad app available on launch day. Nor was there one the day the iPad 2 came out. But that didn’t stop people from heading to the app store and typing ‘Facebook’.
In the mean time, some enterprising entrepreneurs took the opportunity to launch their own, unofficial Facebook iPad apps — which millions of people wound up downloading. One of these is MyPad (formerly called FacePad), which has seen strong growth since it first launched in January, offering access to Facebook features like Photos, News Feed, and Chat — with an interface that’s slicker than the web version of the site. The app has steadily improved since then, and recently introduced its iPhone application.
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Yes, we know that technology entrepreneurs are revolutionizing media, healthcare, education, energy, even government. But what about the ancient art of diplomacy? Can entrepreneurs – and, in particular, Internet entrepreneurs – help us run the world more effectively?
According to Parag Khanna, the author of How To Run The World: Charting A Course For The Next Renaissance, we live in a world of perfect storms and crises which requires management by what he calls “creative capitalism.” I caught up with Khanna last month at the excellent “Whose Crazy Idea Is It Anyway” conference in Amsterdam about the future of the university, and he explained to me how an entrepreneurial approach to diplomacy can make the world a better place. → Read More
Time was when a GPS device was the must-have item in any self-respecting gadget-lover’s gear bag. But as years wore on and smartphones began to usurp the location functions, they’ve grown increasingly irrelevant. Sure, they still serve a purpose, but we’ve been advising companies like Garmin and TomTom for years to do some serious self-evaluation if they expect to be around much longer. TomTom appears to have truly taken this to heart, and are taking the appropriate actions. → Read More
Netflix announced disappointing earnings today, and its expectations to go slide into unprofitability next year. The stock is trading at around $87 in after-hours, down from a close of $120. Following the blowback from his price change, CEO Reed Hastings says, “The focus for us is in rebuilding our reputation.”
Asked a question about the attempt to separate the DVD business from the streaming business and create a new in a new Qwikster brand (a plan now abandoned), Hastings admits now: “In hindsight, it is hard to justify. Having separate brands can in theory make sense. However after the price increase, Qwikster became the symbol of Netflix not listening.”
Below are my notes. You can listen to the entire Q&A in the audio embed below. → Read More
The creator of Lisp and arguably the father of modern artificial intelligence, John McCarthy, died last night. He studied mathematics with the famous John Nash at Princeton and, notably, held the first “computer-chess” match between scientists in the US and the USSR. He transmitted the moves by telegraph.
McCarthy believed AI should be interactive, allowing for a give and take similar to AI simulators like Eliza and, more recently, Siri. His own labs were run in an open, free-wheeling fashion, encouraging exploration and argument. He won the Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery in 1972 and the National Medal of Science in 1991.
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You may agree with Wikileaks’ mission. Or you may think they’re a menace. Or perhaps something in between. But here’s one thing you can’t deny: they’re an organization, with a leader, a name, and (however well hidden) servers, bank accounts, and so on. They also have principles — which, again, may not be to your liking, but they at least exist: removing certain identifying information, distributing to press by certain means only, etc.
The world’s dominant payment institutions are preventing people from donating to Wikileaks. I suppose that’s their prerogative, and of course their senators and MPs would have a fit otherwise. But I’m not sure they realize exactly what they’re getting into. They must not be familiar with the Hydra. → Read More
According to a tipster, social product review site gdgt will be expanding its embeddable widget offerings, which have previously included Time’s Techland blog, to a more massive scale on our sister AOL site, Engadget. A screencap of how the integration will work, above.
Like TechCrunch’s Crunchbase, gdgt will be syndicating its crowdsourced product data, user review data, Q&A and discussions across related Engadget content. In return gdgt will benefit from the exposure to Engadget’s formidable readership.
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President Obama has added a new web service to his repertoire: Tumblr, the hot blogging service that just raised another $85 million in funding. You can find the new blog right here.
The site was set up by the 2012 Obama/Biden campaign, which also runs his Facebook page and Twitter account (The White House also recently launched an account on Foursquare).
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Netflix third quarter earnings are out, and along with it the quarterly shareholder letter from CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells. In the letter (embedded below), Netflix talks about the impact of recent pricing changes and its now-retracted strategy to divide the streaming and DVD services into two businesses. The price changes in particular “hurt our hard‐earned reputation, and stalled our domestic growth.”
Netflix expects the impact to lower both revenues and profits in the fourth quarter. And in the first quarter of next year, the company expects to lose money as it invests heavily to launch in the UK and Ireland. It expects to continue to be in the red “for a few quarters.” Below is an excerpt of the the beginning of the letter, followed by the entire embedded document. → Read More
The reclusive horologist George Daniels, famous for his work on Breguet and his important co-axial escapement, died last Friday at his home in the Isle of Man. Daniels was 85.
The horologist was one of the first to catalog some of the best known watches in the world, traveling through Europe to examine rare and odd pieces from his favorite manufacturer, Abraham-Louis Breguet, and great watches from manufacturers like Patek Philippe. He was also an avid motorist and noted trickster, pretending to misuse some rare watches while he was photographing, nearly driving their curator to apoplexy.
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Streaming movie and TV show platform Netflix reported third quarter earnings today. Revenue came in at 822 million up 49 percent from 2010. Earnings per share for the quarter was $1.16, which is up 66 percent from the same quarter 2010. Analysts expected earnings of $0.96 cents per share.
Net Income was $62 million for the quarter, up 63 percent from 2010. Netflix now has 23.8 million subscribers. Of those subscribers, 21.5 million are using the streaming service and 13.9 million are using the DVD service. Netflix actually lost around 800,000 subscribers from last quarter. → Read More
