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Hybrid Motoryacht Design Powered By Diesel And Electric Jet Skis
May 07, 1:15PM
Hybrid cars have been around for a while, but one German grad student is taking the concept to the water. A new hybrid propulsion motorboat designed by Stefanie Behringer, would reduce drag thanks to its three-hull, or trimaran, form. A jet ski attaches to either side of the main hull, helping stabilize the boat. While the jet skis are electric-powered, the 49-foot long watercraft is also powered by two diesel engines that use Audi's turbo-charged injection technology. Audi's Concept Design team in Munich worked with Behringer on the project.
You Think Pitching Your Startup Idea Is Hard? Watch These Kids Do It
May 07, 6:26AM
Around eighty entrepreneur hopefuls gathered at NASA AMES last week to pitch their ideas for breakthrough technological products, with the hopes of gaining the funding to make their dreams a reality. But this wasn't part of the application process for a new fangled startup accelerator program, and the teams weren't comprised of Valley visionairies in their 20s and 30s but rather high school kids between the ages of 14-18. To compete in the Conrad Foundation's Spirit of Innovation Awards, each team of high schoolers had to create a business plan, technical report, graphical representation and elevator pitch for their product, presenting their invention to a panel of judges for 10 minutes. All in all 27 finalists competed in the Aerospace, Clean Energy and Cyber security categories to win $5,000 and the community support and mentorship to develop their product commercially.
Apple May Not Have Bought Nuance But…
May 07, 3:20AM
This past November, the blogosphere was briefly set on fire when a comment Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak made in passing stated that Apple had acquired the voice recognition company Nuance. Wozniak quickly came out and corrected that comment, and most believed that he had simply confused Nuance with the company he mentioned right afterwards, Siri — a company that Apple actually did acquire in April 2010. But as it turns out, Wozniak's comment, whether he knew it or not at the time, may not have been as off as it seemed. Apple has been negotiating a deal with Nuance in recent months, we've heard from multiple sources. What does that mean? Well, it could mean an acquisition, but that is looking fairly unlikely at this point, we hear. More likely, it means a partnership that will be vital to both companies and could shape the future of iOS.
Esteemed Mobile Developer Joe Hewitt Leaves Facebook
May 07, 12:50AM
Notable mobile developer Joe Hewitt has left Facebook to pursue independent projects related to HTML 5 development. >From his blog: "Today was my last day at Facebook. Normally when I leave a job I go out cursing the management and wishing I had left much sooner. In the case of Facebook, I sent heartfelt emails to all of my managers thanking them for the privilege of letting me work there, and I genuinely meant it. Facebook was the longest I ever worked at one company, and the best employer I've ever had."
Google Appears To Be Testing A Sparse, Ugly New Results Page
May 07, 12:17AM
Whoa there tipsters, slow down. We've just been bombarded with tips coming our way that Google has rolled out a new-look search results page. Scanning Twitter, it looks like there are in fact a lot of people seeing this. And boy is it ugly. I mean, it's great that Google appears to be trying to clean up the look of the results page, which has gotten pretty cluttered over the years as they add more and more types of information and snippets. But the new design is too sparse. And the colors are too soft. It looks like Bing on a bad day.
Organizing Offline: Zenergo Launches Social Network For Real World Activities
May 06, 9:00PM
Who needs another social network? Maybe you, friend. Admittedly, the social networking space is packed with so many players, it makes the mind reel. Across the Web, it seems like a new social network is born (and dies) every day. There are niche social networking sites for everything you can imagine. The knitting and crochet community has one, as do gamers, pet-lovers, and bowlers. Some of these specialized networks have significant traffic, and while Facebook Groups continues to evolve, it seems that there may still be room for social networks that revolve around shared interests, and specific groups and activities. It's also true that more and more companies are becoming interested in leveraging online activity and interaction to create meaningful connections, relationships, and services offline. The examples are endless. It's for these reasons that Zenergo, an activity-based social network that launches today, still believes there's room to succeed.
Strolling through "Nigeria's Best Buy" (A Photo Essay)
May 06, 7:44PM
LAGOS, NIGERIA-- I'm in Lagos to speak at an event and decided to come a week early to check out the country's tech and entrepreneurship scene. Apparently Arrington thought I was kidding when I told him this. But he should know by now, I don't need a lot of arm twisting to visit a country of 150 million people chaotically surging into modernity. Where there's that much opportunity, there's always entrepreneurship. Nigeria has fascinated me for the last few years: It has the largest population of any country in Africa. It has abundant natural resources, most notably oil. And it has a ton of potential outside of oil. According to the World Bank the non-oil economy has grown at 8% per year for most of the last decade. The problem is employment hasn't budged, and the country has fifty million unemployed young people. Those are the official figures, but people in the country tell me it's actually much higher than that. That helps explain why Nigeria is more known in the West for 419 email scams than its vast economic potential.
Investors Cough Up $1.6 Million To Dine With Grubwithus, The Brilliant Social Dining Service
May 06, 7:24PM
The idea behind Grubwithus is an awesome yet simple one. You browse for a restaurant you'd like to go to in a certain city and buy a ticket for your meal at a set price. But the key is that others do this as well, all with the intention of meeting new people over dinner. And when you're buying your ticket, you can see who your dinner buddies will be. Yes, it's sort of like Groupon meets Meetup. And yes, it's brilliant. So it should be no surprise that a long list of prominent early-stage investors have decided they'd love to back Grubwithus. The service, which launched out of Y Combinator last year, has just raised a $1.6 million round. Who's at the funding table? Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, NEA, SV Angel, Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary, Vivi Nevo, Maynard Webb, Matt Cutts, Elad Gil, Paul Buchheit, Alexis Ohanian, Start Fund, and Y Combinator.
Disrupting Display Advertising With Social, Mobile, And Beyond At Disrupt NYC
May 06, 7:13PM
Brands may be pouring money back into online display advertising, but that doesn't mean that display advertising works or won't be replaced by something else in the next few years. Will it be social, mobile, or something else? At TechCrunch Disrupt NYC, we'll get into this debate with three of the best operators in online advertising: Facebook's new VP of Global Advertising Carolyn Everson, Medialets CEO Eric Litman, and Right Media founder Mike Walrath. Media companies and brands still don't understand the power of social advertising, and Everson is going to explain it to them.
Keen On… Ze Frank: Why We All Need to Go Back to Kindergarten (TCTV)
May 06, 6:18PM
Ze Frank wants to send us all back to kindergarten. Star.me, Ze's soon-to-be fully public startup, which raised $500,000 from star-struck investors including Gary Vaynerchuk and Ron Conway, is an attempt to reinvent the kindergarten's star system of rewards. As Ze told me when he came into the TechCrunchTV studio earlier this week, "stars are good." They make us human, they allow us to display our emotions and become children again. But the funny thing about Ze is that, in building his new online kindergarten, he's had to become an adult – fancying an idea, raising capital, developing a business model, leading a team. And, as he confessed to me, becoming the CEO of a funded start-up hasn't always been as easy as he first imagined when he founded Star.me.
comScore: Android Continues To Top RIM And Apple's iOS For U.S. Smartphone Share
May 06, 6:04PM
comScore's mobile subscriber stats are in for the month and Android continues to top U.S. smartphone share over Apple and RIM. Additionally, during the three month average period ending March 2011, Samsung was top handset manufacturer overall with 24.5 percent market share. Google Android led among smartphone platforms with 34.7 percent market share. The report shows that during the period, 234 million Americans ages 13 and older used mobile devices (this number remained steady from the previous month). But, in terms of smartphones, 72.5 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in March 2011, up 15 percent from the preceding three-month period. 
Disqus Brings @Mentions To Comment Threads
May 06, 5:47PM
Popular commenting platform Disqus, which recently raised $10 million from North Bridge Venture Partners and Union Square Ventures, is adding support for a feature that's both nifty and familiar: mentions within comments. It may not sound particularly sexy, but it could actually help foster better discussions in comment threads (more on that in a bit). If you've ever mentioned someone on Twitter you'll be right at home with Disqus's implementation. Start typing a comment, then type the '@' symbol whenever you'd like to tag someone — this could be a user who has left another message in the comment thread, or a user who hasn't participated. The convention is very similar to the '@reply' system popularized by Twitter, and a small overlay will pop up with autocompleted names drawn from both Twitter and Disqus. Tagged names appear with a gray box around them in the published comment, which looks nice.
Who's In? U.S. Solar Industry Bands Together To Cut Costs, Make Panels Better
May 06, 5:42PM
The U.S. solar industry is banding together to fend off an onslaught of global competition, and to lower the cost of manufacturing solar technology domestically. To make it happen, the newly formed U.S. Photovoltaic Manufacturing Consortium (PVMC) secured a $57.5 million federal grant from the Department of Energy Sunshot Initiative, along with financial commitments totaling $400 million from various state and corporate entities. Today, the PVMC revealed (in an exclusive to TechCrunch) who its earliest members are, including cleantech businesses more often seen as competitors, not collaborators...
Royal Wedding Viewed More Than 100M Times On YouTube
May 06, 5:22PM
The story of tech is largely about adoption, and adoption often comes into focus in the wake of cultural events. Last Friday's wedding of Prince William to Katharine Middleton was the epitome of an event, bringing together YouTube watchers, Facebookers, Flickrers, Twitterers and even Colorers in a mass collective online experience of the festivities. Taking place at 11 am London time (4 am SF time) the wedding itself was live streamed 72 million times, to people watching in 188 countries. With the addition of rebroadcasts that day, the streams reached 101 million by the end of April 29th.
Walking With Robots 2: A Trip To The Valley's Busiest Hospital To See eLEGS In Action (TCTV)
May 06, 5:15PM
Following our visit to Berkeley Bionics to talk with the team about their inspiring artificially intelligent, bionic devices, we were lucky enough to visit The Santa Clara Valley Medical Center (VMC) to speak with those involved in the clinical testing of this new technology as part of patient treatment. Berkeley Bionics has been working in conjunction with VMC Chief of Spinal Cord & Orthopedic Rehabilitation Dr. Akshat Shah to bring eLEGS -- the wearable, artificially intelligent exoskeleton that enables those suffering from paralysis to stand up and walk again -- into patient care, treatment, and rehabilitation. 
TechCrunch Giveaway: Free Ticket To Disrupt In NYC #TechCrunch
May 06, 4:54PM
Here is another chance for you to win a free ticket to this year's Disrupt in NYC. Early bird tickets are no longer available, so this ticket is valued at around $3,000. This is one giveaway you don't want to miss! We have been announcing new guest speakers week after week. Arianna Huffington, Marissa Mayer, Ron Conway, Dennis Crowley, Charlie Rose and many, many more will be joining us. You can read the full list of speakers as of now here. We still have surprises to announce, so be sure to be on the lookout for those. Disrupt NYC is from May 23rd to May 25th and this ticket is good for the entire conference, as well as the after parties. Want it? Just follow the steps below to enter.
Reed Hastings: Netflix DVD Shipments "May Go Down The First Time Ever" This Quarter
May 06, 4:47PM
Netflix is leading the charge when it comes to streaming movies and TV shows over the Internet. It's no longer focussed on DVDs, even though it is about to ship its 3 billionth disc. As bandwidth to the home increases, streaming will just continue to become more popular. At the Wired business conference earlier this week, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings predicted that gigabit-per-second speeds to the home will become common over the next decade. I caught up with Hastings just before he went onstage and shot the video interview above (in which he does a mean impression of a 56K dial-up modem to illustrate how far we've come). "Streaming is the core of our business and it is growing rapidly." he told me. "Streaming is much bigger than DVD for us in terms of hours of viewing, growth, and focus. We are seeing massive consumer adoption of streaming." Not only that, but DVD growth might have peaked. Off camera, Hastings told me that DVD shipments for Netflix "this quarter may go the down first time ever."
Comparison Engine FindTheBest Nabs Former Google Exec Rabin Yaghoubi As President
May 06, 4:27PM
Comparison engine FindTheBest has announced a key hire today. Former Google and DoubleClick exec Rabin Yaghoubi will be joining the company as President. At FindTheBest, Rabin will lead Business Development, Marketing, Sales and Operations from the company's newly opened New York office. At Google, Yaghoubi helped launch and lead Google's content, commerce and local partnerships. At DoubleClick Rabin was Vice President of Global Media, responsible for expanding and ultimately selling the company's media business. 
Janrain Engage Offers Social Login And Sharing For Android Apps
May 06, 4:00PM
Software creator Janrain is bringing its social login SDK to Android phones today. Janrain's plug and play technology allows an app developer's visitors to sign-in to the app with their existing accounts on Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo, LinkedIn or other networks and then publish their comments, purchases, reviews or other activities from the app to multiple social networks.
Zendesk And MindTouch Add Social Knowledge To Customer Support
May 06, 3:00PM
Customer support startup Zendesk is partnering with knowledge base company MindTouch today to offer a social help solution for customer service agents. Now support agents using Zendesk's customer support SaaS, can query a MindTouch-powered knowledge base for quick answers. The idea is that customer support agents can share their knowledge base with other support agents to improve service to consumers. The crowdsourcing functionality is allows for collaborative editing, content scoring, commenting, media and video. And support tickets sent to an end user can also be republished as knowledge base articles. Within the knowledge base platform, customer service agents can search by keyword and see what articles are getting viewed the most, which articles are support agents referencing the most and which articles are being edited the most.
Fly Or Die: The BlackBerry Playbook Vs. The Color Nook
May 06, 2:30PM
Tablets and electronic book readers are on a collision course. In this episode of Fly or Die , ChrunchGear editor John Biggs and I discuss the pros and cons of the new BlackBerry Playbook and the Color Nook from Barnes & Noble. The PlayBook is fast and a solid effort from our much-beleaguered Canadian friends. But is it too little, too late? If you are a BackBerry user and want a tablet that syncs to your phone, this could be for you. (In the video, Biggs keeps saying Android, but he means BlackBerry—too many Four Lokos before the taping). I actually like the PlayBook better than most Android tablets. But if it's incredible apps that you want, the PlayBook's choices are still pretty limited. The Color Nook is a different story. 
Click Here If You've Never Seen A Robot Play Angry Birds Before (Videos)
May 06, 1:30PM
Ah, robots. When they're not busy planning world domination, they apparently play Angry Birds just like the rest of us. OptoFidelity, a Finnish company that specializes in machine vision and optical measurement technology, in addition to other things I don't understand, recently produced a physical robot that knows how to kill nasty green pigs. It most certainly beats the crap out of this (OptoFidelity 1 - Stanford University 0).
Location-Based Mobile Advertising Company JiWire Raises $20 Million
May 06, 1:00PM
Exclusive: Location-based mobile advertising company JiWire has raised $20 million in new funding led by Trident Capital with Comcast Interactive Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Panorama Capital, and Norwest Venture Partners also participated in the financing. With the current funding, JiWire's total capital raised to date is $45 million. JiWire offers a highly targeted, location-based advertising platform that runs across Wi-Fi and mobile for devices such as iPads, smartphones and laptops. Through partnerships with more than 40 public WiFi networks, 30,000 venues and 60 airports, its ads reach more than 40 million people a month. JiWire also has advertising relationships with more than 200 location-based mobile applications.
The Resumator Raises $700,000 For Social Recruiting Solution
May 06, 12:23PM
Pittsburgh-based The Resumator, which aims to "take the hassle out of hiring", has secured $700,000 in funding led by Rincon Venture Partners, with Paige Craig, ff Venture Capital and Christopher Muenchhoff participating. The Resumator is a graduate of the May 2009 AlphaLab program, a startup accelerator program run by seed stage investor Innovation Works, which also participated in the round.
Sophos Acquires Internet Security Appliance Maker Astaro
May 06, 9:49AM
UK-based security software maker Sophos has acquired Astaro, a privately-held provider of network security solutions. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Astaro booked $56 million in billings last year, which makes it the fourth largest dedicated unified threat management (UTM) provider in the world. 
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