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LeWeb '10 Nears. Want To Go? Tell Us Why, We're Giving Away Two Tickets
Nov 27, 4:14AM
On December 8 and 9, the LeWeb conference will descend upon the city of Paris for two days of non-stop tech. This year, the event will have a bit more TechCrunch flavor, as several of us are going, and the startup competition has been tweaked a bit to be more like our own TechCrunch Disrupt competition. It should be a great time. But we realize it's also expensive. So organizer Loic Le Meur has given us two tickets to give away to readers. Now, to be clear, these are tickets to the two-day event, they don't include airfare or lodging. But if you're at or around Paris and/or you don't mind paying for travel, this is a killer deal, as each ticket normally goes for about 2,000 euros.
iPad "Pad" Joke Finally Taken Too Far [Video]
Nov 27, 3:34AM
Just like Steve Jobs said we eventually stopped making fun of and just plain got used to the word "pad" in the name of his magical device, no longer thinking of that other thing also called a pad whenever we pass by an Apple store. In fact, we're already debating the hypothetical merits of the iPad 2 and nary an iTampon 2 or similar reference in sight. Until now... Iselle Slome and the ladies of ArthurORMartha have created just about the most ridiculous parody of a computing product I've ever seen ...
Twitter Users Make Snowstorm Map #UKSnow
Nov 27, 1:44AM
Industrious Briton Ben Marsh has taken advantage of the epic ten inches of snow forecast in the UK this weekend to bring fellow citizens together. On his site UKSnow, users who tweet about the weather in realtime can now see their location coordinates and snow descriptions plotted on a map, as well as streaming in a sidebar. Many are including photos (like the one above) for an even richer experience. 
OMG/JK: Mistletoe, AirPlay, And Other Forms Of Near Field Communication
Nov 27, 12:23AM
It's Black Friday, which means that many of you woke up this morning at the crack of dawn, shrugged off your Thanksgiving food comas, and made your way to the dreary parking lots of electronic stores across the country. Right about now, you're probably just waking up from your recovery nap — and there's nothing better to get your sluggish mind back on track than this week's episode of OMG/JK. This week, we talk about The Daily, an iPad-only newspaper from News Corp that will reportedly be launching soon. We also discuss the latest iOS software release, which adds a slew of features to the iPad just in time for the holidays, including the aptly-named AirPlay. 
Ask a VC: Why David Hornik Invests Close to Home and the Dumbest Deal in the Valley (TCTV)
Nov 26, 11:14PM
Ten years ago, most VCs refused to invest outside of Silicon Valley. Now, most of them have funds in Israel, Europe, India or China-- and lately many of those Chinese funds are outperforming the US counterparts. But August Capital is still sticking with the kind of local venture capital that built this industry, and David Hornik explains why in this week's episode of Ask a VC. But, Portland? Yeah he'd invest in a Portland company and answers a reader question about what the local ecosystem needs to do to get his and other venture capitalists' attention. Hornik also (sort of) answers one of the best reader questions I've gotten in a while: What's the dumbest investment he's seen recently in Silicon Valley? (Hint.)
Vader Waves Hand. "There Is No iPhone." But There Is — In A Big Way In Japan.
Nov 26, 11:13PM
Remember back in 2008 when there was a lot of talk about how the iPhone would flop in Japan? 91 percent of Japanese would not be buying the device, said one survey. By 2009, that talk inevitably turned to how it had already flopped. With some even writing about how the Japanese people "hate" the device. Then something funny happened. That kind of talk abruptly stopped. And for good reason. As it turns out, the iPhone is actually a massive success in the country. Much like it did in the U.S., the iPhone is transforming the mobile landscape in Japan. Two stories today highlight this. The first, talks about the Japanese iPhone "craze" and details how app developers are rushing to get into the potentially huge market for Japanese iPhone apps. The second story notes how NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest mobile carrier, is turning to marketing to make up for the fact that they don't have the iPhone (it's sold there by rival Softbank). Marketing involving yes, Darth Vader.
Former Digg VP Of Engineering Lands At Gilt Groupe
Nov 26, 10:32PM
Well at least one former Digg engineer out there that had a happier Thanksgiving. We've gotten word that John Quinn, former Digg VP of Engineering, will be joining luxury discount marketplace Gilt Groupe as VP of Engineering come next Monday. Quinn will be working in the Gilt Groupe New York office under CIO Steve Jacobs. Prior to Gilt Groupe, Quinn had spent three years at Digg and before that was VP of Engineering at Squaretrade. According to our sources, Quinn was instrumental in the Digg v4 redesign and its problematic move over to a Cassandra versus MySQL database. 
>From The North Face To Vegas: A Facebook Deals Roundup
Nov 26, 9:42PM
It's been less than one month since Facebook launched its new deals service on top of its still-nascent Places platform. But that hasn't stopped it from lining up some of the US's biggest brands in time for the holiday season. A few minutes ago, the social network posted a note that shows just how many companies have already climbed on board to offer deals over the holidays. Note that some of these have already been announced (including the charitable Southwest Deal that donates $1 per check-in to the Make-a-Wish Foundation), but seeing them in one place makes it easier to gauge how much traction the feature is getting. So why is this important? As we've discussed before, these location services are in a race to snap up deals with as many national brands as possible, in addition to the longtail of local businesses. 
Our Favorite Singer/Songwriter Launches A Mad Libs-esque iPhone Song App
Nov 26, 9:38PM
Just in case you're unaware of our affection for singer/songwriter Jonathan Mann, see here, here, here, here, or here. But the relationship didn't start out so friendly. Initially, we ripped him for the Bing jingle song he wrote to win a competition. And Mann responded by writing a song about me. But it's all good. We're BFF now. And Mann keeps cranking out the hits. Now he's trying to see if his song-a-day success can transfer to an iPhone app. Songatron is an app that Mann and developer Iliya Yordanov dreamed up so that anyone could have fun with the songs Mann writes on a daily basis. Essentially, it's a lot like Mab Libs, but for music. You load up the app, say a word, and pick a song you want to apply it to. The song then plays (complete with Mann singing and playing the music) with your word inserted in key points.
Using Video Games to Burn all that Fat Caused by Playing Video Games (TCTV)
Nov 26, 7:37PM
HopeLab is a nonprofit video game lab founded by Pam Omidyar, wife of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. That's right, I said non-profit video game lab. It seeks to make the world better through video games, and it's hoping it has a new hit on its hands with Zamzee. Zamzee combats sedentary behavior by giving kids and teens points for moving more throughout the day and those points can be used to buy virtual goods or exchange for gift cards. Early research shows a whopping 30% jump in activity when people play Zamzee-- the equivalent of running a marathon every month. HopeLabs has decided to spin the game out into a for-profit company to help commercialize the game faster. Richard Tate of HopeLabs joined us via Skype to talk about the game that may be a solution if your kids ate too much Turkey yesterday.
The Seven Principles You Need to Know to Build a Great Social Product
Nov 26, 7:19PM
Social products are an interesting bird. For even the most experienced product designer, social products prove an elusive lover. While there are many obvious truths in social products, there are also alot of ways to design them poorly. Especially when you are deep in the moment making pixel-level decisions trying to remember what's important, things may not be so clear. The only magic I've found in designing compelling social products that have the best shot at breaking through the noise and capturing people's time and money is in being extremely clear on how your social product meets a few key design principles.
Death/Star (Episode 1): The Galaxy Tab, Instagram, and Boxee Box (TCTV)
Nov 26, 4:50PM
Welcome to Death/Star, a new show we are testing on TechCrunch TV. It's a product review show with a twist. My co-host, CrunchGear editor John Biggs, and I give our opinions on three hot products. In the inaugural episode we cover the Android-powered Samsung Galaxy Tablet, photo-sharing app Instagram, and the Boxee Box. To spice things up, we try to go beyond the traditional thumbs up/thumbs down to predict whether each product will end up in the graveyard (in which case we mark it for death) or become a bona fide hit (in which case we give it a star). Hence, the name: Death/Star. A surprise guest appears at the end and punks Biggs (the look on his face is classic).
Southwest's Feel-Good Facebook Places Holiday Promo Helps Kids Make-A-Wish
Nov 26, 4:25PM
The mobile check-in is not just a way to tell your friends where you are via FourSquare or Facebook Places, it is a marketing opportunity. Southwest Airlines is combining Facebook Places and charitable giving to the Make-A-Wish Foundation to encourage travelers to check into Southwest when they get to the airport. >From now through Christmas, Southwest Airlines will make a $1 donation in the form of free travel credit to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which grants wishes to children with life-threatening medical conditions. Often these wishes involve travel, an Southwest will donate up to $300,000 in travel credit through this promotion.
Black Friday Is Almost Over: What Will You Be Spending Your Money On Next Year?
Nov 26, 3:47PM
To quote Dwight Hansen, I do know a thing or two about a thing or two and as such I'm allowed, sometimes, to prognosticate. Even as we thrust our fists into the air triumphantly when we snag the last tattered box containing a Kung Zhu hamster value bundle, the IT industry never sleeps and, like a shark, it must keep moving to survive. Based on what we've seen this year, let's take a look at what we can expect to see next year when we once again fall into the Black Friday Breech. 
11 Or 13? Today, Both MacBook Airs Cost The Same
Nov 26, 3:28PM
A recurring refrain in my Twitter feed is the coded question, "11 or 13?" Despite it's religious overtones, this is not a reference to passages in the Bible. It is a question familiar to any Apple-obsessed consumer: Should I get the 11-inch MacBook Air or the 13-inch? If you've been asking yourself the same question, today the price difference will not be the deciding factor. Although the cheapest 11" MacBook Air is still $999, a Black Friday deal on the the 13" models makes the lower-end one with a 128 GB flash drive the same price as the higher-end 11" model with the 128 GB flash drive. It is actually a dollar cheaper, $1,198 versus $1,199, and the battery lasts longer. 
The Address Book Wars Continue: Facebook Contact-Scraping Chrome Extension Taken Down
Nov 26, 3:00PM
This is just getting silly. Yesterday, we reported on a new Chrome extension created by a developer that allowed you to scrape your Facebook contact information. Called "Facebook Doesn't Own My Friends," the extension provided a work around to import your friends contact information on Facebook into Gmail and CSV files. As we noted in our post, it appears that the extension has been taken down. It's unclear who has actually taken the exporter down, but the implications are clear. The only companies that will provide these technologies are Facebook and Google, and this will probably involve a peace treaty of some sort. So what got us to this dark place where ten minutes after the workaround was posted on TechCrunch, it was taken down? Nearly a month ago, Google began blocking Facebook API access to download Google contacts. Facebook hacked its way around that, and Google subsequently issued a statement that they were "disappointed". Facebook Platform engineer Mike Vernal then responded in the comments of one of our blog posts about the slap fight, defending Facebook's policy and calling it "consistent".
Apple's Black Friday Deals: Sufficiently Interesting
Nov 26, 2:52PM
Get thee to the Applery! Apple's Black Friday deals are now up and you can grab: - $101 off Macs including the iMac, MacBook Air, and MacBook
- $41 off of the iPad and the iPod Touch
- $21 off of the iPod Nano
- Free shipping on all Apple goodness
Google Checkout Now Offers Black Friday Deals
Nov 26, 1:38PM
Last year, Google Checkout debuted a holiday savings promotion in time for Cyber Monday, the monday after Thanksgiving and Black Friday. It looks like Google has gotten a slight head start this year, and is now offering Black Friday promotions for Google Checkout promotions. According an email sent to consumers from Google Checkout, Google will offer exclusive discounts of $5, $10, or $20 when you use the payments system for purchases on Buy.com, BlueNile, and others. You can find participating e-retailers on the deals homepage here.
Associated Press (Or CBS) Surrenders Their Dignity
Nov 26, 8:00AM
A lot of people out there still seem to think that all blogs do is riff off of major media content. Reblog it, or just plain plagiarism. Most people know that most major news is now broken by blogs, but the prejudice is still out there. One thing we abhor is "the unattributed rewrite," When some publication takes a story that was broken by someone else and simply rewrites the same story in their own words without any attribution to the source of the story. It's just not done by reputable sites, whether they're blogs or mainstream media. A simple "the story was first broken by the Associated Press," or whoever, is the honorable thing to do. Speaking of the Associated Press, they've stepped in it again. 
Google's Internal Chrome OS Netbooks Codenamed "Mario" And "Andretti"?
Nov 26, 4:10AM
So, it appears that the first Chrome OS netbooks are set to launch in the next few weeks. And it now appears that the first ones will be Google-branded versions, built by a third-party manufacturer. And you can be sure that Google is already testing these internally, as they do this for basically all of their products leading up to launch. And a few more hints about them may reside in the Chromium issue tracker. For several months, Google has been internally testing Chrome OS on a wide variety of netbooks. These have included Asus Eee machines, Lenovo machines, Dell machines, and a few others. How do I know? Because they're often listed under "Type of computer" in bug reports. But more interesting has been the numerous references to "dogfood" machines. "Dogfooding" is the name given to the process of internally testing your own product. Again, Google has been doing this for months.
Inevitable! Google Chrome Extension Exports Your Facebook Contacts
Nov 25, 11:56PM
Last time we checked in on the Facebook/Google slapfight, Facebook had removed the option to import your contacts from Gmail and was still holding strong on the whole "denying contact info access to Google" rigamarole that started the fight in the first place. Up until now many had no other choice but to use Yahoo Mail if they wanted to mass export their Friends data from Facebook into Google. Well Happy Thanksgiving data reciprocity fans! A third party developer has decided to build "Facebook Doesn't Own My Friends," a Chrome extension that lets you easily export your Facebook Friends' contact information.
Google VP: Chrome OS Coming To Tablets & TVs; Windows And Sys Admins Going Down
Nov 25, 10:44PM
Chrome OS draws near. Last night brought perhaps the more surefire sign yet: Google is openly talking to The New York Times about it. Perhaps that is in response to rumors that it was being delayed into next year. While details are still scant, NYT reports that before the end of the year, Google will release a lightweight netbook running Chrome OS. It will likely be branded as a Google product, but built by a third-party, similar to what the search giant did with their Nexus One phone, says the report. This is in line with what we've heard and were told recently. While a full-scale roll out of Chrome OS has likely been pushed into 2011, Google is still saying that they will release something before the end of the year. Based on messages in the open source Chromium forums, it would seem that this will be a beta version of the OS. One that yes, will be running on their own device that they're currently dogfood testing (testing within the company).
Puralytics CEO On Cleaning Water With Light, Winning The Cleantech Open
Nov 25, 8:56PM
The Cleantech Open— a prestigious annual competition for U.S. tech startups that protect, restore, and reduce the negative impact of humans on the environment— announced its 2010 winners this week. Puralytics, a clean water startup from Beaverton, Oregon, took first prize. The Puralytics team invented and sells a nanotechnology-based, photochemical water purification system that, in comparison to other available systems, can purify water more quickly, remove more impurities from it, and requires less electricity to do so. With 15 percent of the world's total estimated 6.5 billion population lacking freshwater enough to live a healthy life today, companies with promising water technology are in demand, and could help abate a global water and humanitarian crisis. 
Can Anything Stop The Facebook Juggernaut?
Nov 25, 7:37PM
So. Facebook. $35 billion valuation; 600 million users; 25% of all US Web traffic — and all that with fewer employees than Google has job openings. The inventor of the World Wide Web recently warned that the web may be endangered by Facebook's colossal walled garden. A Google engineer was recently paid $3.5 million to not jump ship to work there. Facebook seems an unstoppable juggernaut. And I kind of want them to die. Not because of their policies. They've been reasonably sensitive to their users' wants, and willing to admit when they were wrong (remember Facebook Beacon?) There have been worrying signs of late, for example, their two-faced attitude towards data portability and their trademarking of the word "Face", but I don't (yet) object to what they do. I dislike Facebook because they're mediocre. They have a platform and opportunity unlike anyone else, ever—and what have they done with it? Nothing. None of their so-called innovations are actually even remotely so. Copying Twitter was smart, but hardly new; ditto Foursquare. They called Facebook Groups an innovation; it's a basic feature they should have implemented years ago. Now they're laughably trying to claim that integrating email into their messaging system is a world-shaking revolution.
Are You In A Foodpickle This Thanksgiving? Get Your Cooking Qs Answered In Realtime.
Nov 25, 7:22PM
As everyone is getting their turkeys into the oven and putting the finishing touches on Thanksgiving Day meals, a lot of questions come up. What should the internal temperature of a turkey be to know it is done? How many mashed sweet potatoes would make 3 cups? How do I soften hardened brown sugar? The answers (165 degrees, 3, and microwave it) can be found on Foodpickle, a crowdsourced Q&A section of the foodie site Food52. You can ask a question on Foodpickle itself, or tweet it to @foodpickle. Answers are tweeted back at you. Foodpickle also accepts text messages to 803-380-FOOD (3663). And if you are lucky, your question might even be answered by food writer Amanda Hesser. 
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