Sunday, January 23, 2011

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Apple's First Verizon iPhone Commercial Also Touts AT&T: "Two Is Better Than One"

Jan 23, 8:07AM

Two days ago, Verizon posted their first iPhone teaser commercial to their YouTube page. The tagline? "It begins." Now, it looks as if Apple is ready to follow suit with its own marketing muscle. But they're not just playing up the Verizon iPhone, but rather the fact that it's now on two networks in the U.S. The tagline for this one? "Two is better than one." The 30-second clip below was posted to YouTube today. It's a fairly standard iPhone ad with a hand holding up an iPhone 4 in front of a white background. Except in this commercial, there are two iPhone 4's side-by-side. As Strauss' Blue Danube Waltz plays, the dueling iPhones perform the same tasks in the same way — though there are differences in the pictures being looked at, and the websites being visited, etc. Then the focus shifts to one the devices to show off iPhone 4's features. Then it's back to the two phones, culminating in a side-by-side FaceTime conversation. The phones are then removed, revealing both AT&T and Verizon logos. Then the tagline is put up. Then the iPhone 4 logo.


Using Your Blackberry In Illinois Could Send You To Prison

Jan 23, 4:38AM

This is one of those technology and legal stories that is hard to believe in this day and age. If you are in Illinois, you better be careful where you point your cameraphone or voice recorder. Chris Drew, a Chicago artist, and Tiawanda Moore, a former stripper, are facing up to 15 years in prison for eavesdropping, according to a story in the Chicago News Cooperative. Drew used an Olympus voice recorder to commit his crime and Moore used her Blackberry. Moore is scheduled to go on trial early next month for recording Internal Affairs investigators when she filed a sexual harassment complaint. Moore claims the investigators tried to get her to drop her complaint, so she took out her Blackberry and started a recording which resulted in her arrest. Drew goes on trial in April for recording his conversation with Chicago police officers, without their permission, when he was arrested for selling art without a permit. It's just a misdemeanor to sell art with no permit, but the voice recorder is causing much bigger problems. Both are being charged under the rarely enforced The Illinois Eavesdropping Act, which makes it illegal to audio-record either private or public conversations without the consent of all parties. Illinois is one of 12 states with "two-party consent" eavesdropping laws on the books.


Video: The Crunchies Song!

Jan 23, 12:50AM

Those of you who attended the Crunchies last night or watched the live stream were lucky enough to see Jonathan Mann perform a new song that he wrote specifically for the event. "The Crunchies Song" sums up the event pretty nicely. Find both Mann's live performance and his official video for the song below. You'll note that this is actually Mann's 750th song on YouTube. Yes, he has created a song everyday for over two years now. You might recall some of them, as we've posted a number of them — like the one he wrote about me, the one he wrote about Steve Jobs, the one he wrote about the iPhone 4 antenna (which Apple even played at their press conference), the Steven Slater song, and, the one that first put him on our radar, the Bing Jingle (and the follow-up). Mann even wrote a song to congratulate us on the AOL deal.


Gillmor Gang 1.22.11 (TCTV)

Jan 22, 8:00PM

The abrupt retirement/resignation/deck chair shifting of Google CEO Eric Schmidt couldn't have been timed better — if you were Facebook. As dissected by the Gillmor Gang, the news of Larry Page's reascension to the throne seemed just one more shoe dropping in the wake of Steve Ballmer's axing of Bob Muglia, Steve Jobs' step back to focus on his health, and other reboots from companies including HP, SAP, and I forget. Actually, mentioning HP and SAP served to bore me into stopping the last sentence. The one connective tissue is the tectonic shift in technology caused by the iPad, or as @Scobleizer pointed out, the iPhone. Though @DannySUllivan and @KevinMarks insisted on extolling the virtues of the free and open Web, there's no doubt in my mind that Apple's (and particularly Steve Jobs') combination of design, control of a hungry niche marketplace, and political savvy adds up to a defining moment that rolls up media, technology, consumers, and the enterprise.


TechCrunch Disrupt Winner Qwiki Hits No. 1 On Google Trends 'Hot Searches' In The U.S.

Jan 22, 6:11PM

Buoyed by news that early Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin led an $8 million investment in the startup, TechCrunch Disrupt winner and visual search startup Qwiki has hit no.1 on Google Trends 'Hot Searches' in the U.S. That's a pretty impressive feat for a startup that was virtually unknown six months ago. And the company is still in private alpha. What makes Qwiki so compelling is its ability to generate media on the fly that combines text, audio, and animated photos. It presents information in a highly visual way, assembling photos and spoken text from Wikipedia and other sources to create visual guides to millions of topics. The startup's technology is no doubt disruptive and could become a completely new way in which we consume information.


Weekend Giveaway: Win A Bulletproof IoSafe Hard Drive

Jan 22, 6:04PM

This is truly some bulletproof storage, amirite? Today we're giving away the ioSafe Rugged Portable hard drive, a warranted drive that can withstand a shotgun blast, salt fog, and all kinds of other crazy stuff. The drive, which is shipping at the end of the month, costs $149 but can be yours for the low, low price of one comment.


Arrington Ambush Interviews Crunchies VC Of The Year Yuri Milner

Jan 22, 5:59PM

Last night at the Crunchies, Yuri Milner of Digital Sky Technologies won the VC of the Year award (Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures was a close runner-up). Milner has almost single-handedly created a new class of mezzanine venture capital, allowing companies like Facebook, Groupon, and Zynga to postpone IPOs while still getting a ton of liquidity and huge valuations. Before he could leave the stage after accepting his award last night, Michael tried to ambush interview him. Milner deadpanned his way through the every question, and the result was pretty entertaining (see video). Arrington asked why his investment philosophy is working out so well, noting that Milner invests at what many people at the time think are absurd valuations. "Because of absurd valuations," replied Milner.


Stock Photo Marketplace ClusterShot Hits The Deadpool (Unless …)

Jan 22, 11:41AM

Back in April 2009, I wrote about a site called ClusterShot, which aimed to rival Getty Images-owned stock photography juggernaut iStockphoto. Almost two years later, the company's calling it quits - unless a reasonable buyer steps forward with a reasonable offer. Ironically enough, last I'd heard about ClusterShot was when they reportedly reached profitability less than a year after launching.


Sony's Cloud-Based Qriocity Music Service Debuts In France, Germany, Italy And Spain

Jan 22, 11:13AM

Sony has just announced that Qriocity, the strangely named cloud-based digital music service it aims to rival Apple's iTunes with, is now immediately available in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The service, which is apparently called "Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity" in full, made its debut in the UK and Ireland in December 2010, and provides users with access to a catalogue of millions of songs from labels like - surprise - Sony Music, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and EMI Music as well as several independent labels and publishers.


Boom – Apple's App Store Hits 10 Billion Downloads

Jan 22, 10:33AM

Here we are. Apple has announced on this promotion page that there have been 10 billion downloads from its App Store since its inception. It's a huge milestone in the life of the App Store, which lets people downloads games and software programs for their iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads.


Facebook Just Landed $1.5B; Open Source Alternative Struggles To Raise $10,000

Jan 22, 10:28AM

Facebook just raised $1.5 billion at a $50 billion valuation, having secured just south of $2.4 billion since the company was founded. Contrast that with The Appleseed Project, which aims to establish an open source, fully distributed and decentralized social networking software suite to rival Facebook. I just got an email from the project's lead developer, Michael Chisari, prompting me to participate in their crowd-sourced fundraising efforts. So far, they've raised about $2,200 in 7 days, so they're roughly $7,800 short of their $10,000 fundraising goal.


Groupon CEO Andrew Mason: I'm Following The Arnold Schwarzenegger Guide To Leadership

Jan 22, 5:46AM

This evening at the Crunchies, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason took home the coveted CEO of the Year award. But we couldn't let him leave the stage without taking the opportunity to ask him a few questions about the red-hot company. Our own Michael Arrington kicked things off by asking about Groupon's press release for its recent funding round, when it "Raised, Like, A Billion Dollars". Groupon and Mason have long had a very amusing and irreverent sense of humor. But how long can they keep that up before it causes a deal to fall through, or something else undesirable to happen? Mason replied that he's taking the Arnold Schwarzenegger approach to leadership. That is, he's taking the first part of his career and doing everything stupid he can think of, so people have no expectations for him down the line (then again, he did just win CEO of the Year, so he's not setting the bar too low).


Congratulations Crunchies Winners! Twitter Takes Best Startup Of 2010

Jan 22, 5:45AM

This year's fourth annual Crunchies Awards have just concluded, and we're happy to say that it was an overwhelming success. For those who weren't at the event or watching our livestream, we've included the list of nominees and winners below. Our most sincere congratulations to the winners and to all of the nominees as well. It was an incredibly tight race for many of the categories, and it's safe to say that everyone on this list is at the top of their field. We'd like to take a moment to point out Twitter's win for "Best Overall Startup Or Product", the first time the company has won a Crunchie in this category. Twitter has become an indispensable part of social communication and a key ingredient in the fabric of the web. And congratulations to Groupon's Andrew Mason, who won for CEO of the Year; Mark Pincus, who took Best Founder of the Year, and Quora, which took Best New Startup in 2010.


TechCrunch Giveaway: An Apple iPad #TechCrunch

Jan 22, 5:07AM

We've given one away before, and we are doing it again. Earlier in the month we asked our Facebook fans a question we were curious about. We asked, "Choosing from all of the cool gadgets we write about, if you had the chance to win one, which one would you want?" We had hundreds of fans chime in and the number one thing people wanted was an Apple iPad. We thought since Apple had such a tremendous quarter, an iPad is the number one thing our fans want, and the iPad just won a 2010 Crunchies Award for Best Device, why not give one away?


What Scares Twitter CEO Dick Costolo? Foreigners. (Well, Scaling For Them.)

Jan 22, 4:38AM

Tonight at our Crunchies Awards in San Francisco, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo took the stage with our own Michael Arrington. The topic of discussion? Well, it was sort of all over the place — more of a fun conversation. Mike asked Costolo what he thought about the recent news that Eric Schmidt was being replaced as CEO of Google by co-founder Larry Page. You'd think Costolo would have some insight about the news simply because he himself just took over as CEO of Twitter, replacing Ev Williams, a co-founder (who also stayed with the company).


The Crunchies Awards Livestream [Video]

Jan 22, 3:33AM

It's the most wonderful time of the year! We're live at the The Crunchies Awards at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. We've partnered with fellow blogs VentureBeat and GigaOm to celebrate the best technology achievements of 2010. Those of you at home or backstage like myself can watch them on the livestream above, and chat about them here. The show starts at 7:30 pm, or shortly.


Brickify: Turn Any Image Into A Lego Statue!

Jan 22, 3:20AM

Everyone loves Legos. There is no debate. In fact, there may only be one thing better than Legos: customized Legos. And a new web service aims to provide those to all. Brickify is a website that allows you to put in the URL to any image on the web and it will output a "brickified" image. Yes, it's an image just like the one you just put in — but made of bricks. "Bricks" are the generic and non-trademarked term for Legos, but make no mistake, we're talking Legos here.


PostUp Acquires UberTwitter, Renames Itself (Again) To UberMedia

Jan 21, 11:25PM

Bill Gross is up to something. The CEO of PostUp, who previously founded (and sold) Overture, answers.com, and a number of other companies, has just acquired his second Twitter client in as many weeks. On January 5 PostUp acquired EchoFon, and today the company has announced that it's acquired UberTwiter, which makes Twitter clients for iPhone and BlackBerry. In addition to the acquisition, PostUp has another piece of news: it's changing its name to UberMedia. This is the third name for the company, which was originally called TweetUp, but changed its name last summer to PostUp as it added support for Facebook and LinkedIn.


George Zachary on Doing 30 Seed Deals a Year, Not Missing Hollywood and Crazy Jim Clark (TCTV)

Jan 21, 11:09PM

George Zachary of CRV was our guest on Ask a VC today, and not only did he answer reader questions bluntly, he indulged us with his craziest story from his days working with Internet icon Jim Clark on Shutterfly. The whole episode is below, or feel free to tune into just the answers to these questions: What sort of materials do you look for when initially being approached by an entrepreneur with an idea? A prototype? A business plan? Since you put out your call to entrepreneurs for an app discovery business plan on Facebook, any takers? Do you think app discovery is a big issue and large market opportunity? ...


Blatant IP Theft In App Store Garners Little Response From Apple

Jan 21, 10:50PM

One of the criticisms of Apple's App Store (and application stores in general) is how it is commonplace for a popular app or game to have dozens of clones. These can be sifted through due to their low popularity and shoddy icons, and on the off chance you prefer an ad-supported knock-off over a 99 cent app, they're a good alternative. But not every clone is flattery and bandwagon-jumping; some are outright theft. Case in point, an iOS game entitled The Blocks Cometh, which is a straight lift, graphics and all, of a Flash game of the same name by developer Halfbot. The iOS app has been approved and is available to buy now, though of course you shouldn't buy it (Halfbot is working on an actual iOS port). A week ago, Apple was notified that the game was clearly made entirely from stolen IP , which isn't surprising, as the rest of the offending developer's games seem to be knock-offs as well. But a week later, Apple has yet to pull the app or give any kind of substantial response.


So, What's this Monkey Statue All About? (TCTV)

Jan 21, 10:43PM

The Crunchies Statue. Sure, everyone wants it. But so many people ask us, "Why the hell is it a monkey?" (Hint.)

Still, no one was quite as confused by it as our new intern. Lucky for us a documentary crew was in that day to catch the footage. Watch below.



The Clock Is Set For A Facebook IPO By April, 2012

Jan 21, 9:43PM

Today, Facebook announced that it raised a total of $1.5 billion in its latest round, giving the company a valuation of $50 billion. But it also disclosed something else: when it will likely go public. Buried at the bottom of its press release, it sets a date for when it expects to start filing public financial reports:


Electric Vehicle Makers, CODA Holdings, Appoint Phil Murtaugh CEO

Jan 21, 9:35PM

Today, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based maker of electric vehicles and batteries, CODA Holdings, appointed auto industry veteran Phil Murtaugh as chief executive officer. On a conference call, CODA's interim CEO Steven "Mac" Heller described Murtaugh as someone who believes "the automotive industry can innovate rapidly and be more responsible as a global citizen," and is deeply experienced in building American auto businesses in Asia. Earlier this month, the company raised a $76 million bringing its equity funding to about $200 million, sparking IPO rumors. Murtaugh previously worked as chairman and chief executive officer of GM China. Over a decade, he grew GM's presence there from fifteen employees in its Shanghai operations to 15,000 employees throughout the country, increasing the unit's revenue from $300 million to more than $7 billion. In brief, Murtaugh discussed CODA's plans in Asia, and how he will leverage his experience on behalf of the younger car company...


Facebook Raises $1.5 Billion At $50 Billion Valuation

Jan 21, 9:21PM

Facebook has officially announced that it has just raised $1.5 billion in funding at a $50 billion valuation, according to a release issued today (we've embedded the release below). As stated in the release, the investment was broken into two parts. Goldman Sachs participated in the first round (via an offering to its non-U.S. clients in a fund), which totaled $1 billion. In December, DST and Goldman separately invested another $500 million into the social network. Both rounds gave Facebook a $50 billion valuation, says the company. This brings Facebook's total funding to a staggering $2.336 billion.


MyNines Relaunches Private Sales Aggregator With New UI, Sales Calendar And More

Jan 21, 8:37PM

MyNines, an aggregator of private sales sites, is relaunching today with a number of new features and a more streamlined user experience. Launched in March of 2010, MyNines aims to help consumers sort through the daily flash sales sites. MyNines aggregates products from various online sample sale sites and allows shoppers to find them all in one location. Users can search and filter by designer, category, highest discounts, as well as deals ending soonest, most viewed items, deals under $100, and newly listed. MyNines currently aggregates from over 80 sites, including eBay's Fashion Vault.



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