2009

Cc:Betty, a free service that helps organize group email threads, has rolled out an iPhone app to help declutter your email on your mobile device. Cc:Betty’s app is a group-based…

Survey results published by Harris Interactive suggest that adult Internet users are now spending an average of 13 hours a week online. About 14% spends 24 or more hours a…

I don’t have kids (yet), but I’d be all over this if I did … and if I were a native English speaker: TC50 finalist Story Something is cautiously opening…

Hardware

Build your own Death Star from the blueprints

8:00 pm PST • December 22, 2009

Now you can get the Death Star plans without having to depending on those Bothan spies. Some enterprising publishing company has licensed and released the penultimate Star Wars geek accessory:…

Most people would probably view a hardcore, 16 hour-a-day addiction to World of Warcraft as a bad thing. That was certainly the case for Hubert Thieblot a few years ago,…

Everyday I troll SEC Form D Filings to discover new startups, fundings and investments. I put everything I find into CrunchBase. For everyone else I give you the daily digest,…

So it’s the end of 2009 and an appropiate time to take stock. We’re not going to bore you with a long analysis of the year. Suffice it to say…

Much of the web is based around clickstreams. The latest version of Whrrl, a location-based application by Pelago, wants to take that concept into the real world, with “footstreams.” Up…

Hardware

Google, Rome, and Empire

5:00 pm PST • December 22, 2009

2500 years ago, Europe was a filthy mess of dirt roads, battered and cracked by hooves in the summer and rutted by rude wheels in the winter. To travel from…

Zynga’s massively successful moneymaking machine is about to get another way to reach its millions of avid users. Today, the company is starting to test SMS notifications, allowing a small…

When Delicious founder Joshua Schachter left Yahoo in June of last year, he probably thought he was done with the place. Apparently, he’s not. As he noticed today, Yahoo is…

Realtime news stream startup Mozzler, which launched at our November Realtime CrunchUp, is bringing more of a news reader feel to its stream search. Mozzler lets you search Twitter, Facebook,…

Back in September, we wrote about a new iPhone app that would allow you to run a background check on a new lover. It’s mildly creepy, but also kind of…

It’s not really an unprecedented product — magnetic levitation works for high-speed trains and other future toys, so why not your audio gear? Personally I might be a little nervous…

One of the founders, Tony Conrad, and several of the investors behind Aol-acquired Sphere are starting their next company. Conrad is joined by Co-Founder Tim Young who is also the…

In the wake of Google’s dalliance with Yelp, another online local advertising company, ReachLocal, filed for an IPO today to raise $100 million. In a guest post yesterday, Paul Kedrosky…

Cc:Betty, a free service that helps organize group email threads, has secured $500,000 in funding from Western Technology Investment. The startup previously raised $1.5 million in seed funding in June…

[UK] Build an API and they will come. OK that’s not always the case but throw in a genuine revenue stream and support for a hot mobile gadget with an…

Step 1: Be a huge nerd. Step 2: Deconstruct a SNES controller and a flash drive. Step 3: Solder shit. Step 4: Become an even bigger nerd. [Ben Heck Forums…

We’d like to heartily thank the sponsors that have supported us this year at TechCrunch Europe. Without these guys, we would never be able to afford to create the kind…

I’ll just say it. Everything is better with a digital picture frame. If someone put a digital picture frame in a toaster, I would buy three. So with that in…

Whoever says the legal system in this country is broken, well, you’re right. Comcast was caught tampering with its customers’ packets two years ago. It bitched and moaned like nobody’s…

The iPhone is already touted for its gaming prowess almost endlessly, but it looks like things are about to take a pretty big leap forward. Epic Games has been crackin’…

This is just cool. The pic is of a camera blast shield that’s used to capture those spectacular but deadly explosion videos. The best part is that this is homemade…

It has been a sad few months on FriendFeed following their acquisition by Facebook. Despite assurances that FriendFeed would not die, activity has dwindled and many users have moved on.…

Hardware

Last Minute Shopping: Gift Guide Roundup

1:00 pm PST • December 22, 2009

Still haven’t gotten all those holiday gifts? You still have a wee bit o’ time left. Whether you’re planning to run out to a brick and mortar store or you’re…

We break out normal coverage today to bring you a highly unusual video of the unboxing of a new Nokia N900. The handset comes in what is called a “hack…

Gotta love cops. A woman in Boston got mad at her 14-year-old son for being up at 2:30am playing Grand Theft Auto. (At least the kid wasn’t smoking dust in…

Kublax, the first UK startup to appear resembling Mint in the US, now has new competition in the shape of Money Dashboard, a free online personal finance service for UK…

Ranking cell phone companies is a tough thing to do. Some of these companies have a bunch of popular handsets, whilst others have just one or two yet manage to…