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On The Road With Cr-48: The Chrome Notebook Is Both Shiny And Tarnished
Dec 13, 12:04AM
Every piece of technology has both good and bad attributes. Nothing is perfect. Not even the iPhone. (Well, at least not until that AT&T exclusivity ends.) But until three days ago, I had never used a product with attributes that are both insanely awesome and shockingly awful at the same time. Welcome into the world, Cr-48. Now, Google has made it very clear that they don't intend to release this product as it stands. As such, they've more or less asked those they've sent it to not to review it as a completed product. But it's pretty much impossible to avoid talking about the hardware here because for most of us, it is the first and only gateway we've had into Chrome OS. Plus, there's a lot of interest in this particular device among our readers, so I'm going to talk about it.
Maybe There is Hope for Silicon Valley (and the World) After All
Dec 12, 7:54PM
Living in Silicon Valley, one gets used to meeting people who are optimistic and who talk about changing the world. But as I lamented in this piece about the Valley's obsession with Facebook and Twitter apps, most of its entrepreneurs either think too small or are focused on the wrong things. So, even though I am enthusiastic about its ability to take risks and innovate, I've been skeptical about whether Silicon Valley can really think big enough to solve global problems. That was until I visited Singularity University, located on NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, this week. To say that I was blown away with what I learned and saw in just a few hours would be an understatement. I left Singularity's campus with the same excitement that I used to feel as a child about how engineering and science will, one day, save the world. The experience recalled childhood fantasies of technologies that connect the human brain to a central computer to share knowledge; bionic organs that give people superhuman strength; and nano-organisms that monitor and repair the body and cure disease. And I was reminded of my childhood fears of cyborgs becoming smarter than humans and taking over the world. All the great stuff from sci-fi movies.
NSFW: TC Commenters – Though there's pain in my chest, I still wish you the best with a FAQ
Dec 12, 5:59PM
It's been almost a year and a half since I started writing for TechCrunch, and a lot has changed since then. I've quit drinking, I've written another book, Greece and Ireland have both gone broke, the Chilean miners have become international heroes, and Julian Assange has been locked up. Oh, and TechCrunch has been sold to AOL. And yet, plus Assange, plus c'est la meme chose. Long time readers might recall that in my first column I proposed a few basic guidelines for commenting on TechCrunch. "Rule One: The next time one of you asks the rhetorical question "why is this news?" I swear to God I will come round to your basement, gather up all of your Wil Wheaton action figures and melt them down into a giant plastic phallus. If you've ever seen the Miriam Karlin scene in A Clockwork Orange, you know what happens next. Save us both a trip and next time you find yourself asking "why is this news?", instead ask yourself "why do I still live with my parents?". It's news because people better than you said so."...that kind of thing. The initial result was encouraging - for a brief period of maybe 30 or 40 seconds the quality of comments on TechCrunch rose noticeably, including a 20% drop in misspelled name-calling and 35% fewer ungrammatical demands for any given writer to be fired. Since then, though, things have tailed off again - to the point where several of the writers no longer even look at comments, lest they be so disheartened with the state of humanity that they're prompted to go on a killing spree.
Throw Out Your Business Cards, Hashable's iPhone App Is Now Live
Dec 12, 4:50PM
If you've been waiting for an #intro to Hashable—the only way up until now that you could get into the semi-private business networking service that keeps tracks of your connections through Twitter and email—you can now invite yourself by downloading Hashable's iPhone app (iTunes link). It just went live on iTunes this weekend. Hashable makes it super-easy to introduce two people via Twitter or email, or keep track of people you #justmet or had #lunch with or showed a #demo to. Up until now, you had to remember to Tweet out the correct hashtag and the Twitter handle of the person you connected with so that Hashable could record it. That was fine for early adopters, but once you have the iPhone app, there is no going back to the Twitter and email hacks. 
No, It's Not A Facebook Profile. It's Picasso (well, almost).
Dec 12, 4:31PM
If Pablo Picasso or Belgian surrealist, René Magritte, were alive and on Facebook, their profiles would probably be a terrific work of art. Yes, that's right, Magritte is the one who did this painting. With a little inspiration from the Treachery of Images, I bet he'd also write something along the lines of "This is not a Facebook profile" or "Ceci n'est pas un profil Facebook" somewhere on his Facebook page. Yet, while Picasso and Magritte may not be around to wow us with a little contemporary Facebook art, the profile of French artist Alexandre Oudin is probably the next best thing. 
You Too Can Be Julian Assange In 'WikiLeaks: The Game'
Dec 12, 4:06PM
Between the drama, intrigue and Interpol, the WikiLeaks saga has all the trimmings of a Hollywood movie. One friend of mine is debating quitting her job in order to write a movie script (She sees Lupin from Harry Potter as playing Assange). And she better hurry up -- I'm betting at least two WikiLeaks-related scripts are getting pushed through Hollywood as I write this. Perpetually outpacing the movie industry, the story has already hit home with the gaming community. Indie game developers have created the WikiLeaks Stories collective in order to turn some of the actual stories revealed in the WikiLeaks cables into games.
Navy's "Mach 7″ Railgun Fires A Round At 33 Megajoules
Dec 12, 3:19PM
You guys, it won't be long before wars really are fought by bunny-hopping space marines in power armor, headshotting dudes from a mile away with railguns. I mean, we pretty much already have all the pieces, it's just a matter of putting them together. This test firing of the Navy's experimental railgun (it's been updated since last time) shows that our geeky weapon dreams are all coming true. Video after the jump.
>From The Infinity Ventures Summit In Kyoto, Japan: 14 Demos From Japanese Startups
Dec 12, 1:21PM
Earlier this week, I attended the Infinity Ventures Summit Fall 2010 in Kyoto/Japan, a two-day web industry event organized by Japanese VC firm Infinity Venture Partners. During the summit, a few hours of the program were reserved for 14 Japanese start-ups to present their services onstage to a panel of judges and an international crowd of over 500 people. Thumbnail sketches of all demos after the break.
DreamForce Kinect
Dec 12, 1:32AM
Sometimes it gets so hard to begin a post. This is not one of those times. Marc Benioff tells the story of how Bill Clinton was delayed coming out here for his session at Dreamforce 2010, was going to be an hour late, 15,000 people ready for POTUS 42, now what? Then Marc noticed Stevie Wonder walking down the hall toward him, taking Benioff up on his invitation to see Clinton speak and then stick around for the night's concert with Neil Young. So Marc called an audible and brought Stevie onstage for an extraordinary conversation interrupted only when Clinton reached the auditorium. I had forgotten how incredibly intelligent and equally verbose Bill could be, but his gentle embrace of Stevie Wonder spoke across the generations and cultures. And later that night we sat in awe as Neil Young sang to the ages, every strum having a reason to be there. The message of serendipity, hope, living a life of service mixed with compassion, all those things we yearn for privately but laugh off in the public moment, on display and alive 30 years to the day John Lennon was killed.
CityVille Hits 6 Million Daily Active Users In 8 Days
Dec 12, 1:10AM
Zynga's newest game, CityVille, is the fastest growing game in the company's history. But we already knew that. It had nearly 300,000 players in the first 24 hours, and 3 million daily active users in its first week. But it's growth ramp keeps on going crazy. Now, not quite two days after it hit the 3-million user mark, it is already at 6 million daily active users, we've learned from the company. To put that in perspective, that is four times faster than it took FrontierVille to get to 6 million daily active users, and more than five time faster than it took FarmVille.
Electric Composters Don't Say "Holiday," Where To Buy Green Tech Gifts Online
Dec 11, 9:57PM
Reasonable people understand this by now: environmentalists aren't all tree hugging vegetarians with unwashed hair — not that there's anything wrong with that — and tech enthusiasts aren't all oblivious to the burgeoning problems of energy consumption and e-waste. Still, it's tough to shop online for geeks who want to be environmentally responsible, and nouveau hippies who covet gadgets. Why? It's easy to find green gifts in the beauty, fashion, home or kids category. Many retail websites, however, bury their great green electronics pages rather than highlighting them, and making them easy to find from the homepage... 
Hey, Steve, Mark, Biz or Ron – Want To Speak At TechCrunch Moscow? #TCMoscow
Dec 11, 8:53PM
What started out as a simple idea to try to explore Russia's emerging Internet technology over an afternoon event in Moscow quickly gathered momentum. Which is why, on Monday December 13, TechCrunch Europe is coming to Moscow, Russia, for our first ever TechCrunch Moscow (to be held in English). But we also decided that it would be awesome to have some Silicon Valley players attend virtually, either by video feed or via the telepresence equipment kindly provided by Cisco from their Valley offices. It beats traveling from the US. So this is an unashamed appeal: if you are Mark Zuckerburg, Steve Jobs or someone of that elite level, then we'd love you to appear on stage via video link. Let's build some links between Russia and the Valley. Maybe Ron Conway or Evan Williams / Biz Stone is available? We don't know - that's why we're making this appeal. So, Ron, Biz, Steve or Mark - if you're free, then contact TechCrunch Europe Editor Mike Butcher (mikebutcher AT techcrunch.com). Thanks. 
TechCrunch Giveaway: Five Google Chrome Cr-48 Notebooks
Dec 11, 8:26PM
TC Teardown: Who Is Best Positioned To Win The $20 Billion Brand Advertising Prize?
Dec 11, 8:26PM
Editor's note: Brand dollars are still the biggest unclaimed prize on the interent. Guest author Steven Carpenter handicaps the players who are most likely to get them. One of the biggest business opportunities in the consumer Internet space is to create products and services that attract a share of the billions of dollars in held-up brand marketing that has yet to find its way onto the web. With the explosion of various kinds of content and the innovative ways advertisers can segment and track users, why are marketers so reluctant to open up the floodgates? Quite simply, because the current online solutions—search, lead generation, display, video—do not provide a high enough return for these kinds of categories and are not consistent with the image these brands have invested so heavily to achieve. Commensurate with the potential riches, there is an enormous amount of startup energy and experimentation going on in this area. In this installment of the TechCrunch Teardown, I will look at the four leaders—Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Groupon—and how their new interactions—"like", "follow", "friend/check-in", "group coupon"—are fairing with brand advertisers.
Did Those Yahoo Layoffs Hit Early?
Dec 11, 8:22PM
There's been a lot of speculation around when these Yahoo layoffs will roll out. As we heard a few weeks ago, Yahoo plans to cut as much as 20 percent of its workforce. We reported that layoffs started taking place two weeks ago, particularly in the Yahoo Groups and Flickr Product groups. But All Things Digital informed us that layoffs would actually be starting around December 13th. But it looks like Yahoo may have started to give pink slips, according to this Tweet from Yahoo senior software developer Zach Graves. Graves writes, "The number of people carrying boxes out of Yahoo tonight is not surprising, nor the last of it." 
Gillmor Gang 12.11.10 (TCTV)
Dec 11, 8:00PM
The Gillmor Gang traveled to Moscone Center for a special live edition at Dreamforce 2010. Salesforce.com's premier conference has ballooned to more than 30,000 registered attendees, and now covers Moscone North, South, and West venues. Regular Gang member and Cloudblogger John Taschek and analyst and ZDNet columnist Phil Wainewright held down the enterprise perspective, joined by new Salesforce chief scientist JP Rangaswami and Forbes associate editor Victoria Barret. Barret focused her recent cover story on Marc Benioff, and particularly the use of Salesforce Chatter as a tool to address the Facebook/Twitter wave and its impact on the culture of business in the realtime age. She had watched the previous day's keynote from him, finding herself surprised it was almost better to mix video and realtime streams from attendees and those watching on the Net.
Speaking of… Using Your Medium with Reason's Nick Gillespie (TCTV)
Dec 11, 5:48PM
It is 25 degrees here in NY and I feel like a wuss. We California people aren't cut out for the weather out here. I've got thermal underwear (top & bottom), another shirt on top, pants, sweater, jacket, long coat, gloves and a hat on. So, the next time I bitch about it being 50 degrees and windy in San Francisco, I need to remind myself to STFU. These people endure some serious cold. Look at that photo to the left of Nick Gillespie. I think that's what he wears when it is this cold. So, what would draw me out of San Francisco weather to NY this time of year? The celebration of John Stagliano's acquittal presented by the Reason Foundation and hosted by this week's TCTV guest Nick Gillespie. John Stagliano's federal obscenity charges, his acquittal and this celebration warrants an entirely different post, so I'm not going to get into it too much here. The event was held at the famous NY's sexy and edgy "The Box" and the attendees were incredible. We all came out to celebrate something we hold near and dear to our hearts: free speech.
French Fund ISAI Brings Together 70 Entrepreneurs to Invest in Commerce Guys
Dec 11, 5:41PM
The French entrepreneurs' fund, ISAI, has just announced that its investing in Commerce Guys, a Franco-American company that develops open source Drupal e-commerce solutions. This is the third investment for the fund run by some 70 French entrepreneurs from these companies, which previously invested in carpooling platform Covoiturage and the high-class online marketplace, InstantLuxe. And while the transaction amount has not been disclosed, I'll venture a wild guess that it most likely lies between the €500,000 and €1.5 million range - which would be in-line with the rest of ISAI's investments.
The 5 Myths Of Building A Great Mobile Team
Dec 11, 5:19PM
Editor's note: As the Web goes mobile, every Web company needs to build mobile products. Author Elad Gil, director of Geo at Twitter, has a lot of experience in that area. Way before selling his company Mixer Labs to Twitter last year, he kickstarted Google's mobile efforts back in 2004, when Google's mobile team "consisted of 1/4 of an engineer dedicated to maintaining an old WAP search server on the brink of collapse." Gil pulled Google's first mobile team together, recruited the first engineers, started discussions with carriers, and was involved in Google's early mobile acquisitions which set the stage for Google Mobile Maps and Android. In this guest post, he shares what he learned. Note that Elad works at Twitter but the following piece reflects his view only and does not represent Twitter's thoughts or strategy. In the early days of Google's mobile team, we needed to navigate a series of misunderstandings most people have about consumer mobile app development, and how to build a great consumer mobile team and product. Given the ridiculous growth of mobile today, many companies I know are trying to start their mobile divisions and they are making the same mistakes over and over. Similarly, many mobile consumer startups are making a series of common mistakes. This post draws on my experience building Google's early mobile team to point out how to overcome the myths people still believe about making super successful mobile applications.
Letter From Canada: Why Is America So Furious About Wikileaks?
Dec 11, 2:54PM
The most baffling thing about the Wikileaks Cablegate kerfuffle is the massive foot-shooting overreaction across the entire American political spectrum. Here in the rest of the world (okay, in Canada), we've already moved on, because (to date) the cables are more shrug-inducing than explosive—but US senators are still in the throes of a bizarre frenzy of rabid chest-beating and tooth-gnashing. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, has called for Julian Assange's prosecution, despite the general consensus that he hasn't actually committed any American crime. Mitch McConnell, a Republican, has a slightly clearer-eyed view; he wants the law changed so that Assange can be prosecuted as a terrorist. Joe Lieberman wants a criminal investigation of not just Assange but also the New York Times.
Betali.st Gives Early Adopters A Heads Up
Dec 11, 12:49PM
If you're as addicted to startups as we are, you'll love Betali.st. Inspired by the just as minimal Museum of Modern Betas, Betali.st creator Marc Köhlbrugge has started curating an online list of not yet public startups that are currently or will soon be giving out invites to their private betas. Bookmark it in your browser if you want to be first to try the next Twitter or Instagram, call dibs on your account name or just see what the competition is up to. Eat your heart out tech hipsters.
Japan's Social Gaming Giant DeNA Under Suspicion Of Breaking Antitrust Law
Dec 11, 5:46AM
Bad news from Japan's multi-billion dollar social gaming industry earlier this week: Tokyo-based mobile gaming heavyweight DeNA (current market cap: US$4.5 billion) was investigated on Wednesday by the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) over antitrust issues. The allegation: DeNA, which recently paid US$400 million to acquire American smartphone game maker ngmoco, pressured Japanese mobile game developers to release titles exclusively on Mobage-town (its mobile social gaming community) - and to not provide games on rival GREE's mobile platform. 
Android Market Gets A Badly-Needed Facelift (But Web Purchasing Is Still MIA)
Dec 11, 5:45AM
I've been an Android fan for a while now, but I can't remember the last time I had anything good to say about its integrated application marketplace, Android Market. Compared to the iPhone's App Store, Market's experience has always looked less visually compelling, and in general it's been harder (and less fun) to navigate. Today, the Google team has announced that Android Market will be getting an upgrade over the next two weeks. And good news: this update will be going to all Android users who are on version 1.6 or higher, which means it will go out to the vast majority of devices. I haven't gotten access to the application yet, but judging by the screenshots the Market has gotten a fresh coat of paint, and looks much more modern. Promoted applications — which until now have been tiles at the top of the screen that would change every few seconds — will now be featured in a swipable view that looks a lot like Apple's CoverFlow. 
Path And Facebook Finally Hook Up — But They're Taking It Slow. Also, Reply Via SMS
Dec 11, 1:35AM
When former Facebook Senior Platform Manager Dave Morin left to begin a new startup, it was a solid bet that it would play nicely with the world's largest social network. But when Path launched in November, just about everyone on the web was surprised at just how... antisocial it was. Well, maybe "antisocial" is the wrong word. It's more like "antiviral" — something which most apps feel they need to be to survive these days. What led to this antiviral backlash? The fact that you couldn't push pictures from Path out to the big social networks like Twitter and yes, Facebook. Well today, Path has finally embraced Facebook. Sort of.
WITN: Paul Still Hates Le Web, London and Apparently Sitting Still (TCTV)
Dec 11, 12:59AM
Three or four jobs ago, (who can keep count?) Paul was a columnist for The Guardian and he made a quick name for himself in Valley circles with a blistering critique of Le Web, a conference he hates so much he attends every year. But he says, after this year, he's done. (Again.) He's back in London now, and he's almost as miserable. In this edition of "Why Is This News?" we revisit a few familiar themes: How can all Skype connections in London be so horrible and are the startups any better. Spoiler alert, Brits: Get ready to send more hate mail. video below.
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