Startup Battlefield News
  • TC

    The TechCrunch Disrupt Final Five: Betterment, MOVIECLIPS, Publish2, Soluto And UJAM

    Michael Arrington

    Eighty thousand people have tuned in to TechCrunch Disrupt to watch the launch of twenty new startups and products in the Startup Battlefield – nearly 2,000 in live attendance and another staggering 78,000 on the live video stream. Of those twenty just ten made it to the second round, where the focus was on the business model. After long deliberations, and after calculating the total score of each startup based on our panel of expert judges and voting from the audience and viewers, we now have the final five TechCrunch Disrupt startups. The winner takes home an experience of a lifetime, $50,000 in cash and the Disrupt Cup.

  • Startups

    Survival Of The Fittest: The Startups That Made The Second Round At #TCDisrupt

    Robin Wauters

    We were fortunate enough to witness a lot of fascinating startups strut their stuff here at TechCrunch Disrupt, not just on the main stage but also in the Startup Alley and beyond. But of course the event is and remains a competition, so the experts have been working hard to select those startups with the most potential to be genuinely disruptive, and vote them into the second round of the pitching contest. Just ten of the original twenty startups have been invited back to round two. The final few startups will be announced tomorrow, and they’ll be back on stage for the final round of demo and rapid-fire Q&A with our experts. Here they are:

  • TC

    WeReward’s iPhone App Lets You Earn Cash For Check-Ins

    Leena Rao

    It seems like the idea of checking-in to a location, restaurant or venue has become more of a mainstream activity thanks to Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt and other location-based services. Many of these services reward users with special badges or even coupons when they check-in to a certain venue. Enter WeReward, which is launching at TechCrunch Disrupt today, which has a different take on the rewards system for check-ins. WeReward, which is an iPhone app and standalone site, allows you to earn points and cash for check-ins or tasks. The free app allows you to access a list of businesses in your area, which are tied into CitySearch’s Citygrid, where you can earn points. For example, you can earn 1000 points for checking into a certain restaurant. And if you can check-in via Foursquare and Twitter with a photo to verify you are actually at the business directly from the app. You can search for venues by subject and even access reviews and location and hours information from the app. Each 1000 points is worth 1 cent and consumers can cash in the points they accumulate for money through WeReward.

  • TC

    Betterment Wants To Be Your New, Higher-Yield Savings Account

    Jason Kincaid

    Betterment, a new startup that is launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt, is looking to become the “replacement for your savings account” — it earns you more money than a standard savings account while offering more flexibility than you’d get from higher yield accounts. And, unlike most financial services, Betterment is designed so that anyone can use it, regardless of their knowledge about the market and financial products. The site has established two portfolios, one of which consists of numerous stocks and another of ‘ultra-safe’ bonds. After linking your bank account with the service you use a slider to adjust how much risk you want to take, which determines how much money is allocated into each portfolio.

  • Hardware

    Battlefield: Bad Company 2 fixes a-comin' this week

    Nicholas Deleon

    Be on the lookout for a Battlefield: Bad Company 2 update sometime this week, probably by Wednesday. Most of the changes affect the multi-portion of the game, something that I’ve participated in for, oh, 18 seconds before dying, cursing, then never playing again. True story!

  • Hardware

    Battlefield: Earth writer says sorry to all of Planet Earth

    Nicholas Deleon

    Contrition is a wonderful thing. Now, I’m not the biggest sci-fi guy here, but even I know that Battlefield: Earth ranks among the worst films ever created—some would even say that it is the single worst movie in the history of cinema. That may well be, but the gentleman who penned the original script has now, on the record, officially apologized to mankind for helping to create the movie. That’s called integrity, folks.

  • Hardware

    Battlefield: Bad Company 2 sells many copies (plus bonus rant!)

    Nicholas Deleon

    God almighty do I have a bone to pick with Battlefield: Bad Company 2, which I bought on release day like a mark. The game is doing quite well for EA, having already sold 2.3 million units (and projected to sell 4 million by the end of the year). So that’s ahead of expectations—it’s a hit, have a party. The thing that annoys me (and Matt, for that matter) is the game’s implementation of checkpoints. There’s not nearly enough of them, and it’s infuriating. I was very close to lighting my monitor on fire last night.

  • Hardware

    EA removes SecuROM DRM from Battlefield: Bad Company 2

    Nicholas Deleon

    Since we’re your go-to source for complaining about DRM, I figure we should mention the latest development regarding EA’s Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Dice, the game’s developer’s, have removed SecuROM DRM from both the retail version of the game as well as the digitally distributed one (i.e. Steam). Why a Steam game even needs SecuROM in the first place (it’s merely a disc check, so…) is a question I cannot answer. It’s probably like a contractual thing or something.

  • Hardware

    1. Battlefield Heroes 2. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 3. ??? 4. Profit! (Maybe)

    Nicholas Deleon

    I didn’t even know Battlefield: Heroes was available, and here I find out that there’s verifiable controversy! (Aside from WoW, I’m not really a multi-player guy, per se.) Anyhow, thanks to the smashing success of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, EA is planning to do a bit of a tie-in. Did you buy B:BC2? If you did, then EA will give you $5 worth of in-game currency to spend on virtual pants or whatever.

  • Hardware

    EA hits the streets to show off Bad Company 2

    Matt Burns

    Now this is how you advertise a game. Are you paying attention, Activition? EA Belgium took Bad Company 2 to the people of Brussels and in a real big way. Although, in all honesty, EA didn’t come up with this gorilla marketing scheme on their own. Epson did the same exact thing a few months back, […]

  • Hardware

    Let's talk about Battlefield: Bad Company 2

    Nicholas Deleon

    Most of your friendly neighborhood CrunchGear writers have played Battlefield: Bad Company 2 for at least a little bit. We have different opinions about the game, but I think we all like it to a degree. I bought it for two reason: the Eurogamer review was glowing, and I wanted to support Modern Warfare 2‘s most direct competitor. Genres grow stale when one game/publisher so utterly dominates it, so $50 EA’s way hopefully will go toward keeping the FPS genre as fresh as it can be. I mean, there’s but so many ways you can make “put-cursor-over-man’s-face-and-left-click” before you’re like, “Man, I’m bored, let’s go bowling.”