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Can YouTube Handle Livestreaming The Royal Wedding?
Apr 19, 1:29PM
YouTube loves to push its livestreaming capabilities. It's done U2 concerts and government debates , but now it will stream what may turn out to be its biggest live event ever: The British Royal Wedding. Well, it would be the biggest event ever if it wasn't starting at 5 AM ET on Friday, April 29. But you know how crazy people get for royal weddings, and plenty of people will be watching from all over the world. The U2 concert topped out at 10 million streams. The last British royal wedding was decades ago. The people are hungry for their pomp and circumstance, even those who aren't British subjects. (I don't understand it, I only report it).
Sonos For Android Is Here, Devices Now Support Airplay
Apr 19, 1:00PM
You've been waiting and now it's here: Sonos has just announced the availability of the free Controller on the Android platform. It is compatible with almost all Android phones and tablets and supports the standard Sonos feature set (music assignment, browsing, search) as well as a few interesting additions. The app takes advantage of Android's native speech recognition to offer voice search ("Zamfir, Master of the Pan Flute") and it also highjacks your Android device's volume keys to control the volume of the Sonos device. The Sonos system now also supports Airplay but in a very roundabout way. If you have an Airport Express with Airplay support (or Apple TV, for that matter), you can transmit audio from an iPad, iPod, or iPhone to that device using Airplay. You can then take the live stream from the Airplay device and send it to any Sonos device on your network. It's obviously not ideal, but it works. You can still transmit audio from multiple devices (including iTunes libraries) around your network. 
Dish Taking Over Blockbuster Leases, Will Maintain Physical Stores
Apr 19, 1:00PM
According to an AP report, Dish Networks, the soon-to-be new owner of Blockbuster, is keeping the leases on 500 of Blockbuster's physical stores. The reasoning, while on the surface inscrutable, will give Dish a physical presence and allow it access to Blockbuster's assets and brand to sell its own satellite TV service to consumers.
Andreessen Horowitz Leads $1.75M Round In Freebie Marketplace Listia
Apr 19, 12:59PM
Listia, a marketplace for free stuff, has raised $1.75 million in funding from an impressive roster of investors and angels. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from SV Angel, Founder Collective, High Line Venture Partners, Max Levchin, Naval Ravikant, Alex Zubillaga, James Hong and others. Listia previously raised $400K in angel funding. Y Combinator-incubated Listia offers auctions where people use free points to bid on items other users are giving away for free. You can earn these points by interacting on the site (and giving away free stuff of your own), or you can buy some points yourself. The system ensures that the person who gets the item being given away actually wants it. 
The BlackBerry PlayBook Is Now Available In The US & Canada
Apr 19, 12:09PM
Never mind the reviews, if the PlayBook is on your shopping list, you probably don't need a reminder that it hits a variety of retailers today in both the US and Canada. Pricing is much like the iPad's with the 16 GB WiFi version starting out the party at $500, the 32GB costing $599, and the 64GB running $699. Of course the PlayBook is only available in WiFi models as of yet with the 3G models still on tap for a later release. So now the question is whether you should actually buy the PlayBook. MG found it incomplete, which is in line with most other reviews as the PlayBook doesn't have a native calander, email client, or Android app compatibility. John also has a review sample and notes the same thing along with stating it's a "very usable device."
Courtesy Of Moo, AOL's About.me Allows Users To Print Free Business Cards
Apr 19, 11:55AM
Personal profile startup About.me, which was acquired by AOL last December, is adding a new feature today—the ability to print business cards for free from personal profiles on the platform. In case you aren't familiar with About.me, the site offers people free profile pages. On your dedicated profile pake, can include your name, bio and links to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites that have information about you. Users can also upload high-resolution photos to the site, making profiles look fairly sleek and professional with minimal effort. 
Hitachi Announces First USB 3.0 External Drives, Bundled With Personal Cloud Space
Apr 19, 11:45AM
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (which was just acquired by Western Digital) has announced the company's first USB 3.0 external hard drives, the so-called Touro Mobile Pro Portable Drive and the Touro Desk Pro External Drive (the bigger one in the picture). What's special about these devices is the personal cloud-based back up solution they come with. In other words, you can store data on your hardware and online - if things go awry in either one of these "two levels of protection" (Hitachi), you don't have to worry about losing valuable data. Both drives spin at 7,200rpm.
Do I Hear $50 million? This Bidding War Is About Tweetdeck's High-End Users
Apr 19, 8:54AM
Talk about swings and roundabouts. In this case, Silicon Roundabouts. For Tweetdeck holds a special place in the growing galaxy of London tech startups and news today that it is still 'in play' as an acquisition target is fascinating. Back in February we reported - pretty confidently - that UberMedia had acquired Tweetdeck for $30m, although no party had released any official statement. If true then this would have given Bill Gross' company, after buying EchoFon, another popular Twitter client, 20% of the userbase of Twitter. Tweetdeck reportedly has 11% of active Twitter users. But oh what users they are.
Samsung Inks $1.375 Billion Deal With Seagate On HDD Operations Sale And More
Apr 19, 8:22AM
Samsung and Seagate this morning announced a broad 'strategic alignment' in a move to expand their existing relationship and more effectively counter competitor Western Digital. The most important elements of the agreement include Samsung combining its hard disk drive operations into Seagate, receiving significant equity ownership in the HDD and storage solutions provider and enhancing the current patent cross-license agreement between the two companies. The combined value of these transactions and agreements is approximately $1.375 billion USD, which will be paid by Seagate to Samsung in the form of 50% stock and 50% cash.
Nokia Brings Photorealistic 3D Models Of 20 Entire Cities To Ovi Maps
Apr 19, 7:53AM
Users of Google Maps and Bing Maps have enjoyed 3D imagery for a while now, and Nokia is now catching up with the launch of (admittedly very nice-looking) photorealistic 3D models of 20 metropolitan areas from across the globe. On Maps.ovi.com/3d, you can now explore places in 3D in major cities like London, Barcelona, Los Angeles, Milan, New York, San Francisco and, of course, Helsinki. The feature is free on Ovi Maps and will be formally introduced later today at the Where 2.0 conference in California.
Google's 'Map Maker' Now Lets You Edit Google Maps In The United States
Apr 19, 7:01AM
It's hard to believe, but for the last few years Google Maps users in the United States have been missing out on a pretty important feature (though there's a decent chance you've never heard of it). It's not particularly sexy, and many of the people reading this post will probably never take advantage of it, but we'll all reap the benefits over the coming months. Meet Google Map Maker. The feature is pretty self-explanatory: it allows users to create (or, in the case of the US, edit) Google Maps, and it's already had a major impact worldwide. You see, in the United States, we've been able to access online maps for years because companies have been plotting and licensing the data to services like MapQuest and Google. But in many countries, there wasn't any data for online maps to speak of — so Google created a web-based tool so people could create their own. Edits are submitted by users, and after a moderation process, they're added to Google Maps.
Vokle Raises $767K For Its Live Video Conferencing Platform
Apr 19, 5:17AM
Vokle, a web-based video communication platform, announced today that it has closed a $767K round of seed funding. The round was led by Tech Coast Angels, Sierra Angels, Grammy-nominated singer Imogen Heap, Rafe Furst, and various private investors. The round was the second part of a $200K angel investment the startup closed at the end of last year (led by the same investors), and adds to the $300K of seed capital it raised back in 2008, bringing Vokle's total funding to $1.26 million. The startup will be using its most recent funding to continue building and scaling its user base, to step up hiring efforts, and to finish its move into new, larger office space in downtown Santa Monica, CA. Vokle is a live, web-based video talk show platform that enables you to interact with your audience in realtime. And if that doesn't get you, the cool thing about Vokle is that it's a microsite, or an app if you prefer, so you can embed it anywhere, like a YouTube video. Obviously, Vokle isn't a destination site, so you can add it to your website to give your visitors a one-stop experience, rather than redirecting to Vokle's homepage, which gives a little boost to those user-retention/bounce stats. 
Buzzd Rebrands As Local Response; Debuts Social Customer Management Tool For Businesses
Apr 19, 3:50AM
When Nihal Mehta launched Buzzd with co-founder Deepen Shah, he believed in the power of the check-in and essentially created an city guide that aggregated check-ins from Foursquare, Gowalla, and others. But because of the competitive landscape in the location-based network space, Buzzd never really took off. So Mehta went back to the drawing board, with the hope of creating a service that would combine the element of the check-in he found intriguing with Buzzd and advertising and marketing elements (Mehta's first startup mobile marketing service Ipsh! was sold to Omnicom years ago). The result, which he calls "a culmination of everything he's done," of this is Local Response, a new web-based tool that allows local businesses to respond to the "check-in" on social media sites with marketing campaigns to promote transactions. LocalResponse aggregates real-‐time social media check-‐ins from Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, Instagram and dozens of other services to provide a simple interface for local businesses to directly respond to their most influential and valuable customers. What's compelling about the platform compared to competitors is that it analyzes massive amounts of data in addition to check-ins from the Twitter firehose, photo sharing sites and more to find other forms of check-ins. These could be posting a picture on Instagram of a dish from a restaurant or Tweeting that you are visiting a particular bar. 
Five Reasons Why Twitter Will Kill TweetDeck
Apr 19, 3:31AM
On reading today's report by the Wall Street Journal that Twitter is in talks to buy TweetDeck, I believe the only reason it is doing so is to protect its turf. Less than a week ago, CNN wrote a piece that UberMedia will be developing a competitor. Ubermedia, is the same company, that was supposed to have bought TweetDeck two months ago. UberMedia is also the same company that has been on an acquiring binge of popular Twitter clients—UberTwitter, Echofon and Twidroyd, namely. Shortly after that, Twitter blocked Ubermedia for violation of many of its terms of service. Here are 5 reasons why Twitter will kill Tweetdeck: 
A Wind Farm In Oregon Draws $100 Million Investment From Google's Treasury
Apr 19, 3:12AM
Google Inc.'s putting another $100 million into large-scale, renewable energy projects. The company's director of green business operations, Rick Needham, revealed Monday in a post to the corporate blog: [Google] invested approximately $100 million in the Shepherds Flat Wind Farm...currently under construction near windy Arlington, Ore. When completed in 2012 [the plant] will produce 845 MW of energy. This will be the first commercial wind farm in the U.S. to deploy, at scale, turbines that use permanent magnet generators...The electricity produced at Shepherds Flat will be sold under long-term agreements to Southern California Edison...
Yotpo Raises $800K For Its Opinion Aggregation Engine
Apr 19, 2:47AM
Tel Aviv-based Yotpo announced today that it has raised $800K in seed funding. The funding was led by 2B Angels and PLUS Ventures, two early stage Israeli investment firms focused on communications and new media. According to Yotpo Co-founder Tomer Tagrin, the startup will use the funding to expand its user base, ramp up hiring, and position itself for launch later this year. So what is Yotpo? It turns out this is a surprisingly open-ended question, as the startup only opened its doors to public beta testing a few days ago. But, in the big picture, the company describes itself as a social business-to-business tool that "makes your customers happy" by facilitating a better user experience -- specifically for the owners of blogs and eCommerce sites. 
Adaptly Raises $2.7 Million To Facilitate Cross Platform Social Ad Buys
Apr 19, 2:44AM
Social ad buying platform Adaptly has raised a total of $2.7 million in seed and Series A funding from First Round Capital, Charles River Ventures, Kirschenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners and Lerer Ventures. Angel investors also include Gary Vaynerchuk, Invite Media founder Nathaniel Turner and Interclick CEO Michael Katz . Adaptly, which caters to clients like Pepsi's Lipton/Brisk, makes it easier for brands to advertise across social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and Plentyoffish by thinking outside of the display ads box. "Social is NOT display," co-founder Nikhil Sethi tells me. "What's really important for us is to socialize the evolution of display ads. Those two dots don't get connected and they need to be." 
EFB For iPad: Will Your Pilot Be Using This In 2012?
Apr 19, 2:31AM
Back in February, we heard that a private jet company had gotten FAA approval to use an iPad-based charting system instead of paper charts, which are the standard throughout the industry. They used an app called Mobile TC, but GlobalNavSource has come up with another app, EFB ("electronic flight bag"), and it's being offered for free until they release it commercially on June first. This isn't Flight Control crossed with Google Maps: it's an actual tool for pilots that could easily be used by commercial airlines in the next couple years.
Little Bets, The Book
Apr 19, 2:06AM
Google, Pixar, Twitter. All of them started as side projects or experiments which only later turned into big ideas. In a world of lean startups, the mantra is to get a product out there in the hands of consumers and keep making changes until something clicks. TechCrunch contributor Peter Sims (@petersims) has a new book out hat explains why little bets are more likely to lead to big ideas than big bets. It is called, appropriately enough, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries, and it is just hitting Amazon and the book stores this week. Sims, who is a recovering venture capitalist, recently offered TechCrunch readers a preview of his thinking in a guest post which turned out to be very popular. He wrote:
Chris DeWolfe's MindJolt Expands Gaming Empire; Buys SGN And Hallpass Media
Apr 19, 1:26AM
MindJolt, the game distribution company that was acquired by MySpace founder and former CEO Chris DeWolfe last year, has made two significant acquisitions in the gaming space today— game developer Social Gaming Network (SGN) and game network Hallpass Media. The acquisitions were first reported by the New York Times. Financial terms of the acquisitions were not disclosed. SGN creates a number of popular games for iPhone and Android devices and social platforms like Facebook. SGN's hit online and mobile games (which have seen 30 million downloads to date), include Mini Tycoon Casino, F.A.S.T., and Skies of Glory. Founded by Shervin Pishevar, SGN has raised a total of $17 million in funding. 
So Is Web 3.0 Already Here? (TCTV)
Apr 18, 11:04PM
Last week, we invited big-thinkers Reid Hoffman and Tim O'Reilly into the TechCrunch Studios to talk about Hoffman's definition of "Web 3.0"-- a torrent of innovation that's going to be unleashed by all of this personal data being collected about us. In the first segment we talked about the scary implications of this wave of companies, and in the second segment we talked about the sometimes-futuristic, exciting ways data could make our lives better. In this segment, I ask the two whether Web 3.0 is here now. The answer is yes and no. Like the shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 the lines are blurred, with some companies-- like Google back then and Groupon today-- straddling two worlds. But the two are making investments in uber-data-centric companies now.
TweetDeck Reportedly Still In Play
Apr 18, 10:24PM
Earlier in February we had reported on UberMedia's acquisition talks with TweetDeck, a land grab move that would have given Bill Gross' UberMedia control of nearly 20% of tweets served. But the acquisition did not actually close. Shortly there-afterward Twitter shut down and then reinstating three UberMedia apps (Twidroyd, UberCurrent and UberSocial) for violating TOS policies. Hmm ... The WSJ is today reporting that Twitter and UberMedia have crossed paths once more, and that the status update giant is also in talks with TweetDeck and is offering around $50 million for the Twitter client. We had reported that Ubermedia's TweetDeck offer was between $25-$30 million.
Cardnap: The Hipmunk of Gift Cards Wants To Make Card Search A Breeze
Apr 18, 10:07PM
Launching today is Perth-based Cardnap, a site that lets you search for the best deals on gift cards. Cardnap wants to be what Hipmunk is for airline search, in that the startup is employing a user-friendly UI to make browsing and filtering your gift card results a non-teeth-grinding experience. Cardnap not only lets you search for discounted gift cards, it allows you to resell your own, too. No doubt you have a few Pets.com gift cards lying around, and while Cardnap will probably turn you down on that one, you can resell your gift cards and get most of your money back. (The site offers returns as high as 92 percent.) 
Zynga Discontinues Mafia Wars Game On Myspace
Apr 18, 9:43PM
It's not a good sign for a social network when game developers begin to shut down applications all together. And it appears that Zynga is shuttering its Mafia Wars game on beleaguered social network Myspace. According to a notice on the Mafia Wars homepage within Myspace, Zynga is discontinuing Mafia Wars on Myspace beginning today but is encouraging users to continue playing Mafia Wars at MafiaWars.com. Interestingly, Zynga leads users to its own independent gaming portal as opposed to directing users to the Facebook version of the game.
RIM, Caught Between Work And Whimsy, Has Lost Its Way
Apr 18, 9:32PM
I've been using the Blackberry Playbook since Friday and I find it to be a unique and very usable device. The obvious problems aside - no native email client, poor browsing, wonky Flash support - it's clear that RIM took lots of care to produce a device that would appeal to their core audience of crackberriers. Even the ill-advised Blackberry Bridge makes a certain kind of sense. Why? Because the removal of all points of security failure from the tablet gives the folks in IT a reason to OK the device on their networks. The same can't be said of any of the other tablets, iOS and Android devices included. In fact, without the Bridge the Playbook is a simple and compelling media consumption device. But Blackberry is now trying to survive a period marked by a rapid and permanent change in smartphone usage. Back when Blackberries were pagers, the best a business user on the road could hope for was a fax sent to a hotel room. A few short years later and Blackberry ruled the mobile messaging space. Their email product and messenger allowed countless people to remain connected everywhere, at all times, an accomplishment that brought about a sea change in the way we interact online. The Blackberry is a unique artifact that defined how a generation lived and worked. Blackberries made it OK to be always on call, much to our own detriment. 
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