Here are some of yesterday’s stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: → Read More
And we’re off! These are some of our Hackathon Hackers, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to hack here at TC Disrupt BJ. We tried our hardest to grab some great folks and it’s a pleasure working with these hardcore coders.
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To celebrate the fifty years of the Peace Corps’s work in 139 countries, journalist and former Peace Corps volunteer Maureen Orth has created an online platform, called PeaceCorpsPostcards, for former volunteers to contribute their own stories, pictures and “Video postcards.”
In case you aren’t familiar, The Peace Corps is a volunteer program run by the United States Government. Post-college grads work abroad for two years; volunteering in building schools, infrastructure development, government, agriculture and more. → Read More
So, this piece of news managed to sneak under the radar, but it’s worth recognizing as a victory for the Internet and for the state of California. Digital technology has been slow to come to some offline institutions, a glaring (and sad) example being the very democratic process of registering to vote (and then actually voting) in local and state elections. A few weeks ago, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill that (once again) legalizes online voter registration in the state of California.
As TheVotingNews points out, while California does in fact have a voter registration database, until the passage of 3B 397, residents could not fully register to vote online. Instead, voters could go through the process of filling out registration forms, but instead of hitting “approve” or “send” and closing the loop, Californians had to then print out the completed form and send it to their local county election office for approval. → Read More
We’re about fifteen minutes away from the start of Disrupt Hackathon Beijing and it looks like we have about 350 people on the floor and teams are forming now. It will be interesting to see what folks come up with at this our first Disrupt in China – let alone our first Disrupt event outside of the US.
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YouTube’s ambitions to challenge cable television head-on are getting a big boost tonight: the world’s largest video site is announcing that it’s lined up a slew of new content partners who will be developing shows for the site, covering everything from sports to comedy to music. The news had been rumored for some time, including a report last week in the WSJ.
In a blog post announcing the news, YouTube says its goal with these channels is to “[give] you more reasons to keep coming back again and again”. The post references the so-called “defining channels” born out of cable, like MTV, ESPN, and CNN, and says that the next generation of these will emerge on YouTube. → Read More
Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff has a knack for taking what is happening on the consumer web and applying it to business. He even spins #OccupyWallStreet as a something businesses should learn from and emulate. He makes his case in the video above, which I shot yesterday in New York with my iPhone (sorry for the bad lighting). His point is that if protesters can use Twitter and Facebook to #OccupyOakland, why can’t companies use the same social tools to organize themselves and motivate their customers?
“Facebook is really eating the Web,” he says, echoing Marc Andreessen’s notion of software eating the world. Benioff points to the fact that people are spending 4 hours a day on the social network. → Read More
There are still a number of pain points with existing web conferencing platforms, including having to install software, complicated pricing plans, poor usability, and cluttered interfaces. LiveMinutes is hoping to disrupt this space with its free, simple document-based web conferencing service.
LiveMinutes free web-conferencing service sits between file sharing and web conferencing. You can upload documents (i.e. PowerPoint presentations etc.), and LiveMinutes will give you a link to share with other participants. Participants can join without downloading any software or signing up. → Read More
Here’s one to file under “completely unexpected” — remember HP’s long-dead TouchPad? Well, apparently it’s got some life it in yet, as Best Buy will be allowing their customers to purchase a 32GB model for $149 so long as they buy an HP computer at the same time.
The deal starts on November 1, and I suspect Best Buy and HP will be hyping it like crazy next week. This whole thing begs a far bigger question though: where the hell are these things coming from? → Read More
You wouldn’t expect an event like FPDI, the Flat Panel Display International Exhibition, to be much more than a dry little gathering of circuit benders and substrate wranglers. And that’s kind of what it is. But you would do well to remember that these pixel jockeys are putting together the screens that make things like the iPhone 4 possible. And this year’s expo looks like a bumper crop of technology we’ll be seeing in devices soon.
Tech-On, as usual, is covering the event with gusto, if you want to get this straight from the source. But I’ve highlighted the items most worth paying attention to below. If you like pixels, inquire within. → Read More
Perhaps realizing that re-selling other people’s boxed games wasn’t exactly a sustainable business model, GameStop decided a few months back that it was going to try selling devices as well. The iPhone and iPad can be bought there, and your games can be traded in credit for them as well. But what have they been missing, and what have their customers undoubtedly been clamoring for? Android tablets!
Shortly after they announced they’d be inviting Apple into their stores, they announced that they were working with a device maker to bring a GameStop-branded Android tablet out as well. Hardcore gamers trembled with delight. And now their day has come! → Read More
Social and mobile game developer 6waves Lolapps has acquired Beijing-based social gaming company Smartron5. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Smartron5, which is backed by Origo Partners, has been developing social games with deeper game play experiences for Asian and international social networks. Smartron5’s CEO, Gage Galinger will become 6waves Lolapps’ Vice President of Content Development and will head up operations for the company in China.
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Editor’s note: Guest contributor Peter D’Amato was recently laid off as a copywriter at daily deals site BuyWithMe, which cut half its staff and is trying to sell itself to Gilt Groupe. Below is his account of that day.
October 19 was a rainy Wednesday afternoon, and the remaining employees of BuyWithMe poured out cups of whiskey and wine from bottles purchased by the CEO. An untouched bottle of Prosecco sat ignored on another table. The mood was gloomy. The group had already torn through the half dozen boxes of pizza that had been ordered—it had maybe been enough pizza for the fraction of the company that would still be employed at the end of the day, but it was uncomfortably clear that it had not been ordered to feed all of the more than 200 employees waiting to find out if they were being terminated due to BuyWithMe’s failure to “identify sufficient funding to sustain [its] business current employment levels” (as my termination letter so ungrammatically put it).
Netflix is not only in the movie business, it is also turning into this year’s biggest corporate horror story. Having increased its price by 60% earlier this summer, Netflix has lost 800,000 customers and $12 billion in 90 days – including $2.3 billion in one day earlier this week. So should we feel sorry for founder and CEO Reed Hastings, whose has gone from Silicon Valley hero to corporate goat in just a nightmarish three months?
No, we shouldn’t. According to John Tschohl, the so-called “guru of customer service”, Hastings deserves all the ridicule and criticism that he is now getting. → Read More
Beluga, the slick group messaging app that Facebook acquired back in March, is shutting down. In a post on Beluga’s blog, the company’s original team of three writes that, beginning November 11, you’ll no longer be able to send messages (though you’ll still be able to access old messages until December 15, at which point they’ll all be deleted).
If you’d like to download all of your pods before they get harpooned, you can grab an archive of your account using this tool. → Read More
After Netflix signed a deal with The CW Television Network, Hulu is the next online movie platform to announce an agreement with the network. Hulu has just announced a five-year licensing agreement with the CW Network, which is owned by CBS and Warner Brothers, for the rights to stream in-season episodes of The CW’s programming on Hulu Plus’ subscription service and the platform’s free, ad-supported service. Here’s Hulu’s blog post announcing the deal.
The content will be available later this year. Programming includes nine series on The CW’s Fall 2011 schedule, including new series “Ringer,” “Hart of Dixie” and “The Secret Circle,” as well as “The Vampire Diaries,” “Gossip Girl,” “Supernatural,” “Nikita,” “90210” and “America’s Next Top Model.” Hulu says this deal makes it the only online subscription service to carry in-season episodes of The CW’s drama and reality series. → Read More
Since last spring we’ve been tracking the progress of Socialcam, the ‘Instagram for Video’ that spun off from Justin.tv. The app, which is available for iOS and Android, hit the 2 million download milestone at the beginning of the month, and to mark the occasion it launched a new feature that made the ‘Instagram’ comparison even more apt: filters. Yes, you can now overlay your videos with an array of effects (the top two are 70′s and Electronica).
As it turns out, people really like filters on their videos. A lot. Socialcam CEO Michael Seibel tells me that in the two weeks since launching filters, Socialcam had 350,000 downloads, an 84% increase in daily app opens, 69% increase in daily video viewers, and 50% boost in video creation (that’s huge). → Read More
Mobile app monetization and distribution network W3i is announcing the results of its tests to determine whether or not an iPhone’s MAC address can serve as a replacement to the UDID (the unique device identifier), which Apple is phasing out as a way for developers to track an app’s users.
According to W3i, developers can and should begin tracking the iPhone’s MAC address as a UDID alternative, as it has successfully seen Apple approve its own application where this is the case. Unfortunately, this advice is arguably premature. Apple may let slip a single app, but if a large number of iOS developers began doing the same (tracking the MAC addresses, that is), Apple may certainly change its position on the matter. → Read More
Maybe you couldn’t join us in Beijing for our first international Disrupt conference, but all is not lost!
Step one: Order your favorite Chinese takeout.
Step two: Tune into the livestream from Beijing, brought to you through the Great Firewall courtesy of Ustream.
Step three: Tweet what you love and hate the same way you would sitting in the conference hall in the US. The hashtag is #disruptbj. (Seriously, stop giggling, twelve-year-olds and Michael Arrington.)
It’ll be almost the same as being here for thousands less. And you don’t even have to pull an all-nighter to get the highlights. All the Hackathon action starts at 8pm PST Saturday night and the conference begins at 6pm PST Sunday afternoon.
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Nokia’s new Windows Phones won’t hit our shores for at least a few more months, but Nokia’s top brass is already hard at work devising their strategy for cracking the U.S. market. According to Digits, Weber and Nokia are looking to attract first-time smartphone users who feel overwhelmed by other options on the market, and don’t want to pay a princely sum for a new device. → Read More
