Among yesterday’s service shutdowns at Google, which included underperforming and deprecated Web properties like Knol, Wave and Gears, there was also news of the end of RE<C.
What’s RE<C? Just one of those ambitious “we can save the world with Google money!” type projects that gave the search giant the appearance for caring about more than the influx of ad dollars. In this case, RE<C was focused on lowering the cost of renewable energy. Or, as the acronym indicates, to make “renewable energy” (RE) less than (cheaper than) coal (C).
As it turns out, that was easier said than done. → Read More
Please look at this video and tell me it is not magic. Displair, a Russian company from Astrakhan has come up with a technology to project images into the thin air, and use gestures to move them.
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They say that fools and their money are soon parted, and no one knows that better than the sports junk hucksters at Power Balance. Despite filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in federal court on Friday, the company has high hopes for their new product, something called Performance Mouth Gear. → Read More
By now you probably know there’s a hidden camera feature that people can enable on iOS 5 devices, allowing users to snap photos in panorama mode (see video).
However, to enable the hidden feature your device needed to be jailbroken. But as it turns out, you can actually get panorama mode working on your iOS 5 device without jailbreaking it. → Read More
It’s been an interesting journey for mydeco, the home design and furnishings startup founded by the management team behind lastminute.com, one of Europe’s most successful ever online businesses. Back in 2008 the site was ground-breaking in its use of 3D imaging to allow for interactive planning and visualisation tools. It even had a social network. But although doing well enough, the game has changed. Consumers are now assaulted by choice – and the 3D design tools were always slightly more functional than the average person needed or wanted. Instead of designing an infinite number of rooms, and purchase the items therein, mydeco now wants to woo its users by becoming a retailer specialising in curation. As CEO Nicole Vanderbilt told me “We’re a bit like ASOS. We started with an aggregator, we’re now becoming more of a retailer. Retailers own the customer and there are higher margins in that. But we eventually want to be the Google Maps of Interiors – anywhere you want to create beautiful rooms we will be there.”
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Chances are you’ve already heard about the beef between Amazon and Penguin over the sales and lending terms of Penguin e-titles through Amazon’s Kindle lending program. If not, we can recap quickly.
A few days ago Penguin came out with a statement saying that it would suspend making e-editions of new books for libraries and that libraries are to lock down any e-titles for Amazon.com’s Kindle ereader. → Read More
It looks like will be a joyful holiday season for many online retailers this year. comScore is reporting that holiday retail e-commerce spending for the first 20 days of the November to December 2011 season is already up 14 percent from the same period last year. Wednesday, November 16 was the heaviest online spending day of the season to date at $688 million.
comScore is forecasting that total online retail spending for the holiday season will reach $37.6 billion, 15 percent increase from last year’s season. For background, the 2010 holiday shopping period saw a 12 percent increase from 2009. → Read More
Yesterday morning, we reported that Microsoft had acquired Israeli video startup, VideoSurf, for approximately $70 million. The deal indeed has been greenlighted, as Microsoft confirmed in its blog post yesterday. However, at the time, the price of the acquisition was unclear; several sources (who wished to remain anonymous) pegged the number at $70 million. But, today we’ve heard from a solid source that the actual price of the acquisition was actually just under $100 million — in cash.
Sure, it’s not quite the $8.5 billion Microsoft paid for popular voice and video-over-IP service, Skype, but for a relatively young startup, this is a big win. → Read More
If full HD resolution isn’t enough for you, then how about 16 times the resolution of full HD? Japan’s national public broadcasting organization NHK has been working on so-called Ultra HD technology for years, and now it’s ready for the first big test in public.
NHK is planning public screenings of some events at the London Olympics next year in Ultra HD resolution (7,680×4,320 pixels) – not only in Japan, but also in the UK and the US. A first test of actually transmitting that amount of data internationally was completed back in March this year. → Read More
Nokia Siemens Networks would like you to know that it “puts mobile broadband and services at the heart of its strategy”, and to demonstrate this they plan to fire roughly 17,000 people worldwide before the end of 2013 as part of ‘an extensive global restructuring program’. → Read More
Never troll a troll, say men and women much wiser than moi.
To them, I say no, in this case it’s perfectly fine to troll the troll.
From the funny dude who brought you the Mark by Mark Zuckerberg collection, now comes a website where you can, basically, send him $9 via PayPal. → Read More
It’s not the first cell phone that has been designed specifically for women, but it’s certainly one of the most interesting, as far as features and specs are concerned. Fujitsu’s so-called ARROWS Kiss F-03D for the Japanese market runs on Android 2.3, is targeted at women aged between 20 and 30, and comes with “elegant and glimmering jewelry design”.
The area around the “gem-cut” buttons on the front starts lighting up in one of 23 illumination patterns when users receive a call or message. Fujitsu also provides a small stylus that’s supposed to make it easier to write Japanese characters. The Kiss F-03D is waterproof (and ready for use in the bathtub), too. → Read More
VoteIt, a New Orleans-based startup focused on helping groups make decisions with realtime voting tools, announced today that it has raised $800,000 in seed funding from a group of local angels. And, in an example that should prove intriguing to those entrepreneurs looking to make Louisiana home base, VoteIt told us today that it is one of the many startups taking advantage of the state’s tax credit programs aimed at encouraging early-stage businesses (and their investors) to set up shop in Louisiana.
For example, there’s the Angel Investor tax credit, which provides state income or franchise tax credits of up to 35 percent for entrepreneurial businesses; as well as the Digital Media tax credit, which offers a tax credit of 25 percent on production expenditures for digital interactive productions in the state and 35 percent tax credit for payroll expenditures for Louisiana residents. Pretty cool. → Read More
Zinio, which bills itself as the world’s largest digital newsstand and bookstore, has raised $20 million in new funding according to an SEC filing.
Zinio provides global access to thousands of magazine titles from most major publishers in a variety of languages. The company’s website allows publications to be read online or offline on desktop computers (Windows, Mac OS X and Linux) and mobile devices such as the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, WebOS and Android handsets (they just launched their Kindle Fire offering). → Read More
American pop band We The Kings, or rather their record label S-Curve, have teamed up with Israeli startup Interlude (earlier coverage) to produce a fancy interactive video that blends familiar gameplay with video sequences and god-awful music (sorry, We The Kings aficionados).
The “Say You Like Me” video was released yesterday on Vevo, and you should really check it out. Not that it’s the first music video that uses Interlude’s technology platform to boost fan engagement: see Jason Kincaid’s story on Andy Grammer’s interactive music clip from last year. → Read More
Here are some recent stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: → Read More
A testament to how fast we are consuming culture these days, it only took ~72 hours for the UC Davis “Casually Pepper Spraying Cop” Photoshop meme to go from Reddit thread to CNN, with officer John Pike is in all his pepper spraying glory spraying“everyone from Santa to Jesus” on a segment for the international news channel.
Reports CNN’s Jeanne Moos, “He’s become what’s called a meme, an idea reproducing across the web, even spraying another Internet meme (!), The Keyboard Cat.” → Read More
Some people love Klout, while others are in doubt. But, the fact of the matter is that, in the end, all this talking about Klout is … good for Klout. Apparently, in 100 million ways. At the very least, when it comes to social media influence and reputation, Klout is hard to ignore. Even if, like Alexia, one believes that no one really gives a damn about your Klout score.
Well, thanks to Josh Constine’s legwork and research, we bring you another solution. Enter the snark-ily named Flout.me, founded by Pat Nakajima and Anoop Ranganath. In the duo’s own words: “Sites like Klout try to tell you how important you are. That’s ridiculous! Only you know how important you are. Flout lets you flaunt it to the world.” → Read More
“It gives you social energy. It gives you taste of friendship.” It’s Facedrink! And you better go buy some because it will be sued out of existence any minute now. Following in the footsteps of the unofficial Mark Zuckerberg action figure, some dude named Barry Moustapha (ROFLCOPTER) has created a lawyer-magnet energy drink. It’s themed with Facebook colors and proudly displays an “Add as Friend” button on the label. I’d be suspicious this was a hoax, but there’s a photo of a real bottle and reviewers confirm it leave a worse taste in your mouth than getting Poked by your dad. → Read More
I’ve gotten to review a few pico projectors, but haven’t had the opportunity to test one from AAXA. This new one, the P4, looks like it could stand up to my favorite so far, the 3M MP160. Like that device, AAXA’s P4 sacrifices smallness for brightness, and ends up beating the competition by some margin. → Read More
