Austin, Texas | March 8 - 12, 2013
A lot of founders and companies will say that their big focus is on being taken seriously — especially at the earlier stages. But Ben Huh, the CEO of the super popular Cheezburger Network of websites, says that people should also focus on being taken not-so-seriously. Humor can help provide an important edge in the business world, he says, and it’s a tool that’s not used nearly often enough. → Read More
When it comes to high-flying superpowers of the tech industry, it doesn’t get much bigger than Sun Microsystems back in its heyday, while it was under the leadership of co-founder and former CEO Scott McNealy. So you can imagine that it was a bit of a culture shock for McNealy when he dove back into the scrappy world of startups with the 2010 launch of his current company, the enterprise-focused… → Read More
We all know that LeVar Burton has famously played a space traveler in the hugely successful Star Trek: The Next Generation series, but nowadays he is spreading the word that human travel beyond our solar system may actually become a near-term reality for people who aren’t actors — or even astronauts.
As a member of the advisory council of the 100 Year Starship project, Burton is a champion of… → Read More
Newark’s social media-happy mayor, Cory Booker, regularly grabs headlines for his impressively innovative uses of social media. In response to critics’ tweets, he housed residents in his own home after Hurricane Sandy, brought national attention to food stamps, and taken suggestions on how to spend Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million donation to Newark schools. Now that… → Read More
Xi3 recently opened preorders for Piston, the company’s gaming-optimized personal computer. I actually had a chance to speak to the company’s chief marketing officer David Politis over the weekend at South by Southwest Interactive, where he described the device as a combination of the best aspects of PCs and gaming consoles. → Read More
Bing Gordon has become known in recent years for his role as a partner at venerated Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, but anyone who knows him will tell you that he isn’t your typical finance head. As someone whose career has spanned not just technology and VC but also gaming, literature, and entertainment, he has a very well-honed creative side.
And… → Read More
While I was at South by Southwest Interactive, I had a chance to meet with the Leap Motion team and try out their upcoming gesture-based controller. We’ve been writing about the comapny for a while now, but this was a chance to see the technology in-person, and to use it with existing apps.
Thankfully, my own feeble attempts to play Cut The Rope using the Leap Motion Controller weren’t recorded… → Read More
One of the big events coming up for comedy fans this spring will be the return of Arrested Development, which will debut its fourth season on Netflix after a long hiatus. Creator Mitch Hurwitz and star Will Arnett took a few minutes out of their busy lives to answer a few questions about the show. So what’s it like being a big star on TV and then going to the Internet instead? → Read More
Last year, to market the Highlight app the founders walked around Austin in company t-shirts telling people about the service. This year Highlight is doing a little bit more, by renting an ice cream truck and cruising around town handing out ice pops. But they’re also using the promotion as a way to show off the app’s new picture feature. → Read More
Matthew Inman is sick of memes about bacon and kitties. Better known as web comic artist The Oatmeal, Inman gave TechCrunch the lowdown on what’s funny, what’s not, and how he finds inspiration. In this video interview he shoots off his thoughts on 4Chan and The Harlem Shake. When asked about LolCats, he bluntly replied, “Tired of that”. → Read More
City governments here in the United States aren’t typically known as early adopters of the latest in technology and innovation — that means that New York City’s first-ever Chief Digital Officer Rachel Haot has a pretty big job on her hands. So it was great to have the opportunity to talk to Haot about her job and her latest projects while she was in Austin, Texas this past week… → Read More
VEVO just rolled out its first new live and programmed music video offering, VEVO TV. The idea behind VEVO TV is to enable viewers to just sit back and have a stream of videos continuously shown to them, introducing them to new artists and allowing them to relive some old music videos that they might have forgotten about. → Read More
Vimeo On Demand allows creators on the site to set their own prices and provides geo-fencing and other tools to control which areas their content is available in. They can also create custom landing pages for their projects, and the ability to provide clips or trailers as a way to entice viewers to purchase their longer-form version of their content. → Read More
From Yamtrader to Das Keyboard, the SXSWi trade show floor is a mixed bag. While not everything lent itself to an in-depth visit with the TCTV camera, we did find a few interesting companies in the mix. → Read More
At SXSW this afternoon, Google provided developers with a first glance at the Google Glass Mirror API, the main interface between Google Glass, Google’s servers and the apps that developers will write for them. In addition, Google showed off a first round of applications that work on Glass, including how Gmail works on the device, as well as integrations from companies like the New York… → Read More
Yammer CEO and Founder David Sacks said to me in an interview this past weekend that SXSW is showing that suddenly enterprise technology is sexy.
Sorry, I don’t buy it. Enterprise is as sexy as a humming rack of servers. That may be sexy to some but it sure doesn’t match the allure of all the beautiful things on Zazzle or the penthouse apartment on Airbnb. → Read More
When OUYA launched the enormously successful Kickstarter campaign for its Android-based gaming console, CEO Julie Uhrman said she had “no idea” whether it would succeed.
“I was scared shitless,” she said.
Uhrman, who gave a keynote interview this afternoon at South by Southwest Interactive, admitted, “our path to market was unique” (though thanks to Kickstarter it’s becoming less unique). → Read More
Julie Uhrman, the CEO/Founder of the smash Kickstarter-project-turned-gaming-console known as OUYA, was the third keynote speaker at SXSW Interactive 2013. Interviewed by The Verge’s Joshua Topolsky, the two dove in the intricacies and challenges of crowd funding and creating a new hardware startup. → Read More
Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley discussed the company’s evolution from an app that was primarily focused around helping people to find their friends, to finding out more about the world that they live in. Crowley said that one of the underreported stories is the number of companies which rely on Foursquare’s map data and what developers can potentially do with that. → Read More
TechCrunch TV sat down with Shaquille O’Neal yesterday afternoon here at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas to talk about his current focus on all things tech, and it was pretty amazing.
People who are successful in the worlds of sports and entertainment aren’t usually the types that you’d associate with nerdiness. But Shaq, who was famously one of the first major celebrities to take to… → Read More
When you think of crowdsourcing, you usually imagine something like the Pebble smart watch or the Misfit Shine – gadgets that are hard to build in mainstream ways but take off by sparking a groundswell of support. But what about a crowdfunded Tesla museum? Or how about a grocery store that uses no packaging? Those kinds of projects are what Slava Rubin, founder of Indiegogo, is most excited about… → Read More
Electrostatic interfaces – systems that make your fingers “feel” textures on a smooth metal plate – have been around for a long time. They haven’t quite caught on because the sensation is a little creepy and it’s not quite foolproof. However, a researcher at Disney Research in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Olivier Bau, has created a unique system that creates these sensations on any surface using a… → Read More
Since launch just a few weeks ago, email management app Mailbox has been a pretty big hit — so big that more than 1.25 million people have signed up for the waiting list. The downside to that early success is that new users are added to a waiting list as Mailbox tries to keep up with demand. The company has processed about 500,000 applications so far, and is processing 50 million messages a day. → Read More
Senator Jerry Moran (CrunchGov Grade: A) left his tie back in Washington, D.C., and sat down with me for an informal, yet candid discussion at the SXSW Interactive conference. The folksy Kansas representative has been one of the Senate’s few tech wonks, spearheading a bill to create a new visa for immigrant entrepreneurs, the Startup Visa Act 3.0. We’ve included highlights below. From… → Read More
It’s always a pleasure to talk to WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, as he’s one of the more interesting and friendly people in the upper echelons of the tech founder sphere. So we took a few minutes to meet up with him this weekend while he was in Austin for the South By Southwest conference. He’s a native Texan, so it was fun to meet in his home state.
And there was quite a bit to talk about. → Read More
After my panel on Friday at SXSW, Paul Underwood of Deloitte and Will Lovegrove, CEO of Datownia, approached me to talk about their companies. Their viewpoints demonstrate the direction of enterprise app development and the shift to a developer-centric IT world. → Read More
The digital team from Marvel Comics is at South by Southwest Interactive this year to show off some new comics reading experiences that they’ve created.
Today they’re demonstrating a technology that’s currently called Project Gamma. Basically, it’s a way to add music to the experience of reading a digital comic — music that actually adapts to the pace at which you read. As a result, every… → Read More
The idea for Jifiti came about because Shaul Weisband — one of the creators of the app and company behind it — wanted to “teleport” gifts to friends. While teleportation is still not really possible, the team at Jifiti has done the next best thing and is aiming to incorporate this into a new way of shopping. And I think retailers are going to like it. → Read More
One of the reasons that coming to South By Southwest Interactive continues to be worthwhile despite all its flaws is that it still attracts some of the most intelligent and fascinating people to the same place at the same time. Getting to bump into brilliant people leads to some wonderful conversations, and often gives just the boost you need to go back to ‘regular life’ with a fresh pair of… → Read More
It’s debatable whether or not SXSW is still a good place to launch your new hot SoLoMo app, not least because you’ll likely get crowded out by all the other hopefuls, but that isn’t stopping Swarmly from giving it a shot. The app, which quietly debuted on iOS last September, focuses on mainly anonymous, aggregate location data to create something akin to Waze’s crowdsourced traffic data but for… → Read More
