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Weekend Giveaway: An iPad 2
Jun 04, 3:51PM
If I didn't know any better, I'd think iPads grew on trees or were on sale at TJ Maxx or something with the number of these things people want to give away. Regardless, we have a 16GB Wi-Fi iPad 2 waiting for you in sunny San Francisco, ready to wing its way to your mailbox in a few days. Want it? Thought so. Here's how to enter.
(Founder Stories) Reddit's Alexis Ohanian Bows To "Lord Jobs" And Jabs Investors
Jun 04, 2:30PM
Color gets bashed as being a contributing player to the so called startup bubble and the frat-boy attitude of investors from the Web 1.0 era don't do much better in this episode of Founder Stories with host Chris Dixon and Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian. In a conversation spanning a variety of topics, you'll hear Ohanian describe how "Lord Jobs" has indirectly contributed to the success of Zappos and Instagram, the gaping opportunities for start-ups to solve, and the attitude adjustment seen in present day investors; swinging a big load of cash (and something else) doesn't cut it with this class of start-ups.
SEC Watch: Tiger Global Bought Massive Amounts Of LinkedIn Stock Pre And Post IPO
Jun 04, 2:09PM
LinkedIn and investment firm Tiger Global both filed separate SEC filings yesterday evening indicating that the firm loaded up on LinkedIn stock both before and after the company's IPO in May. According to the filing, a Tiger's head Chase Coleman and Tiger fund, PIP V, acquired 2,436,001 shares of preferred and common stock of LinkedIn on secondary markst, from December 21, 2009 to August 10, 2010, for $31,740,600.70. Some of Tiger's investment during this time was reported, but the filing shows Tiger had a much bigger stake. 
The Kno Textbook App Hits The iPad
Jun 04, 12:38PM
Last night, Kno quietly released its first digital textbook app for the iPad. It includes its own store of "over 70,000 titles at 30% to 50% off list" price. And the app is a full textbook reader. The iPad app allows you to organize your digital textbooks and PDFs by dragging and dropping them into "courses." Once you open a textbook, you can swipe through the pages or navigate via a filmstrip of thumbnails up top. There is also full text search. Pages can be bookmarked and highlighted. You can also add digital sticky notes which pop out from the margins. 
Could This Be The First Solar Powered Laptop?
Jun 04, 11:56AM
While there are plenty of solar-powered peripherals that plug into your laptop to boost its battery power, we haven't yet seen a model that runs solely on solar. Industrial Designer Andrea Ponti's concept for the Luce Solar Panel Powered PC could become the greenest laptop ever made. 
White-Hot Flickr Alternative 500px Raises $525K In Series A
Jun 04, 1:39AM
As the complaints about Flickr continue to pile on, scrappy Toronto-based service 500px continues to grow, going from 1000 users in 2009 to over 85K (around 45K of which have joined in the last three months). And after two years of bootstrapping, the startup is today announcing its $525K Series A round with investment from High Line Venture Capital, Deep Creek Capital and ff Venture Capital.
Forget Google, DoJ Fears Apple Gaining Nortel's "Stockpile Of Nuclear Weapons" — Here's Why
Jun 03, 10:26PM
Two months ago, Google disclosed that they were bidding on bankrupt Nortel's patent portfolio. Why? They claim it's a defensive maneuver to protect the "relatively young" company from would-be patent predators. And Google is very serious about it. They put up the $900 million "stalking-horse bid" (the initial bid) for the over 6,000 patents. Given the stakes, it should be no surprise that the U.S. Department of Justice is looking into the bidding. But interestingly, it may not be Google they're too concerned with. As The Wall Street Journal reports today, the DoJ "hasn't found any major competitive issues that would lead it to challenge [Google's] purchase of the patent portfolio." But the same is apparently not true of Apple. The government is concerned about Apple's history of intellectual property protection, WSJ cites sources as saying.
Venture Crapital Lets You Play The Tech Bubble As An HTML5 Game
Jun 03, 10:22PM
Whether you're on Team Andreessen, who held that we weren't in a tech bubble at the AllThingsD conference, or the now revised Team Arrington ("All signs point to a real bubble, probably starting later this year when a lot more companies start to go public."), there's no denying post Groupon S-1 drop that we're in a bubble of people talking about whether or not we're in a tech bubble.
500Friends Allows Retailers To Reward Customers For Social Actions
Jun 03, 10:09PM
Consumers are engaging retailers on Facebook and Twitter now more than ever. Whether it is Liking a deal, Tweeting the link to a product, or even participating in a contest, shoppers are mentioning and interacting with these e-commerce sites on a daily basis. The problem with traditional online loyalty programs mirror offline programs, they only focus on rewarding users for simply their purchases. The challenge for retailers is not only how to track online mentions, but also how to meaningfully reward consumers for these mentions. Enter Y Combinator-backed 500Friends, which offers a platform called Loyalty Plus, which allows retailers to reward their customers for social actions. The SaaS allows retailers to track users Tweeting their purchases, Liking the Facebook page and referring friends. It also allows merchants to reward other actions such as writing product reviews, entering sweepstakes or signing up to newsletters. Each action gives the user points, which can be used towards discounts, or even put towards charity donations. 
Review: HTC Flyer
Jun 03, 9:55PM
A promising aberration. The Flyer is barely a viable product, but it hints at potential that is almost surely being unlocked in the labs of HTC right now. It's kind of cool, and Sense looks nice, but for $600 you have a right to expect something more than a shiny Android 2 tablet with the ability to scribble on screenshots of your email.
Heyzap Brings Social Discovery And Check-In For Games To The iPhone
Jun 03, 9:42PM
Heyzap, a social discovery platform for mobile and online games, announced today that it's zapping its way onto the iPhone just in time for WWDC 2011, Apple's developer conference. The startup will be extending its fast-growing Android community (which launched in March) and has been doubling in size every month since. The startup's new iPhone app will detect recent gameplay and lets users check-in to their favorite games. Once checked-in, Heyzap users can share scores and more on Facebook and Twitter and see what games their friends are playing. Mobile gamers can now check-in to all 65K games on iOS and all 10K games on Android. Huzzah!
Facebook VP Chamath Palihapitiya Forms New Venture Fund, The Social+Capital Partnership
Jun 03, 8:32PM
Facebook vice president Chamath Palihapitiya will leave the company as he launches a large new venture fund called The Social+Capital Partnership, with backing from some of the worlds leading business and technology leaders. The new fund will be up to $400 million in size, he says, and will focus on a wide range of investments in technology, healthcare, education and financial services. Investors in the fund are not yet being disclosed, although Palihapitiya is the largest single limited partner. Facebook is also investing, says the company. Palihapitiya, who joinedFacebook in 2007 and led the launch of the Facebook platform, has been investing for the last several years through a fund called Embarcadero Ventures. Not all of his investments through that fund have been disclosed, but they include Playdom, Peixe Urbano, Pure Storage, Yammer and others.
How Facebook Can Put Google Out of Business
Jun 03, 8:30PM
I was surprised to hear former Google CEO Eric Schmidt publicly lament lost opportunities and missed chances to catch Facebook the other day. I used to envy Google and the vast digital empire that Schmidt commanded. Google had one of the most intricate monopolies of all time. It had the most impressive dataset the world had ever seen; the most sophisticated algorithm to make sense of it; an audience of a billion users expressing their interest; and more than a million advertisers bidding furiously to reach those consumers at just the right moment. And that's why I used to think that Google was unstoppable. Until I realized one very important thing: Google's revered and unparalleled dataset is increasingly dating itself as an ossified relic akin to the Dead Sea Scrolls—outshined by the freshness of the living, breathing organism that is the social Web.
Here We Go Again: Syria Goes Offline
Jun 03, 8:22PM
After Egypt and Libya this spring, Syria is the latest Middle Eastern/North African country to get its connectivity pulled due to internal anti-governmental unrest. According to the Rensys blog almost 2/3rds of Syrian networks have been pulled as of late last night. It seems like killing the Internet is the MENA government default when it comes to quelling protests. 
Apple Hires The Guy Who Hacked Together A Better iOS Notifications System
Jun 03, 7:52PM
Back in February, I wrote that MobileNotifier (a replacement notifications system for jailbroken iOS devices) would be the one thing that would make anyone want to jailbreak — and I stand by it. Months later, my iPhone is still jailbroken, almost solely so that I don't have to go back to Apple's built-in system. It seems I'm not the only one who was impressed. Sometime in the last week or so — just days before they announce iOS 5, which is expected to come complete with a new (and hopefully less terrible) notifications system — Apple has pulled MobileNotifier's developer, Peter Hajas, under their wing.
Twitter Photos Live For Twitter Employees, User Roll-Out Begins Next Week
Jun 03, 7:42PM
So now that we know that the Twitter Photos is very real (as we first reported), the next question is: when can we actually use it? In their initial announcement, Twitter said that the product would roll-out to users in the "next several weeks". But today brings a bit more specific timeline. Initial roll-out to users will begin next week. Twitter's PR team has just sent out a tweet updating users. "Currently, Twitter employees can upload #photos to Twitter.com. We'll start slowly rolling this out to users next week," Twitter's Carolyn Penner writes. You can see a collection of early pictures here. Again, Twitter employees have already begun tweeting with the new feature, using the pic.twitter.com URL.
Social Listing Lets You Create Instant Classified Ads Right From Your Phone
Jun 03, 7:30PM
When I want to sell something, I generally always use eBay or Craigslist, but usually the process takes time, I don't get to meet the person I'm selling to (or buying from), and I can't list from my smartphone. Which is why I've become intrigued by Social Listing, a two-month old startup that launched at Disrupt NYC last week. Social Listing is offering a rich mobile app that combines a few of the key ingredients in Foursquare, Instagram, and Craigslist. Say you've got something to sell, for example, whether it's a device, a car, or you have a service to offer, or a job that needs to get done, Social listing is a location-based app for iOS and Android that connects buyers and sellers all speedy-like via your mobile device. This means that you can snap a pic with your iPhone and then instantly shareit with nearby buyers on Facebook and Twitter. Geotagging takes place automatically behind the scenes, so that users don't have to manually input their location. 
Survey: 36% Of U.S. Adults "Not Concerned" With Electronics Power Consumption
Jun 03, 7:22PM
Adults in the U.S. could use a little more education on economics and physics, it seems. We're not drawing the connection between power consumed by our electronics and the cost of our electric bills. A new survey from the Consumer Electronics Association found thirty six percent of adults in the U.S. are "not concerned" with the amount of power consumed by their gadgets, gear and appliances. Sixty percent of U.S. adults, by contrast, are concerned about the cost of their electric bill. CEA also estimated that just 10.2 million U.S. households are enrolled in electricity management programs, now. That's a mere 8.6 percent of 119 million households that have access to these things... src=
Revenge of the Travel Agent: Jetsetter Announces Travel Planning Service (And Discounts for TechCrunch Readers)
Jun 03, 7:03PM
A few days ago at the All Things D conference, Marc Andreessen predicted that every wacky 1999 dot com business that failed would one day find success in a new incarnation. But what about businesses those dot coms killed? Jetsetter is launching a personal travel planning service today that is essentially a travel agent 2.0. Thankfully, the earlier iteration of online travel sites so decimated the category that Jetsetter has a pretty wide open market opportunity here. A poll of its users found that 90% of them had never used a travel agent and wouldn't even know where to find one.
Why Daily Deals Are Becoming A Raw Deal
Jun 03, 6:59PM
In the wake of Groupon's IPO filing, it's worth looking at the fundamentals of the offer. Growth numbers to date have been phenomenal. But is it a business that can last? We love daily deals for a simple reason: the deals have been outstanding. If revenue growth in the first Internet bubble was about selling a dollar for 50 cents, growth in the daily deals business has been about getting other people to sell their dollars for 50 cents and charging them 25 cents for the privilege. The deals have been embarrassingly good. I used the first Google Offers deal at Floyd's Coffee yesterday. For $3, I got $10 worth of food. Let me tell you, it's really hard to spend $10 in a coffee shop. I got an order of red beans and rice, a Mexican Coke, a doughnut and a chocolate chip cookie. The total came to $9.95. That's a great deal for me, but it's unsustainable for the business. 
Scaling, Scaling, Scaled: textPlus Turns Two, Hits 10 Billion Messages Sent Milestone
Jun 03, 6:36PM
GOGII's well-funded, free text messaging app, textPlus, announced today that it has crossed the 10 billion text messages sent mark since it launched in the app store in June of 2009. They're pumping out texts like McDonald's pumps out burger patties. Of course, when it comes to group and micro-messaging apps, textPlus has some competition. Think SXSW and you probably think group messaging. Ask Around, Ditto, Yobongo, Beluga, GroupMe, FastSociety, etc. have all been making noise, getting acquired by Facebook, or raking in funding. The list goes on. But today textPlus makes it clear who the leader of the pack is and will be for at least the near future. On top of 10 billion total messages sent, in May alone, textPlus sent 1.3 billion texts. The app has been downloaded more than 17.5 million times and, while the startup hasn't finalized the statistics yet, GOGII Founder & CEO Scott Lahman said that the startup has now passed the 8 million monthly active users mark.
Google 'Sunsets' AdMob's Cross-Promotion Download Exchange
Jun 03, 6:31PM
It looks like Google is sunsetting a cross-promotion feature that mobile ad network AdMob previously offered. The AdMob Download Exchange allowed mobile app developers who had an application with available ad space to serve ads that promote other applications in the AdMob exchange. In return, their apps were promoted on other apps in the network. Apparently, Google sent all developers who are participants in the exchange an email informing them that the AdMob Download Exchange is being 'sunset' and 'will no longer operate after June 8, 2011.' From Google's email: This will allow us to focus our efforts on further developing our suite of publisher tools.
Google Acquires PostRank, An Analytics Service For The Social Web
Jun 03, 6:24PM
In another move that makes it clear that Google is putting a much greater focus on 'social', the search giant has just acquired PostRank. Terms of the deal are not being disclosed. PostRank is a service that helps measure how far content, like tweets and Facebook updates, spread across the web. PostRank's products include 'Analytics', which let you see which users are sharing your content and where — as well as how your competitors are doing. Its 'Connect'product helps brands connect with influential users. You can find our coverage of their Activity Streams feature, which launched last year, here. 
The Internet Makes You Declare Winners, Unless You're On French TV
Jun 03, 6:21PM
In an extremely absurd move by French TV regulatory agency CSA, the French can no longer say the words "Facebook" or "Twitter" on television unless they are in the context of a news story. While France has an interesting history of regulating the adoption of American words through its Toubon Laws the move isn't Toubon-related. Rather it's about the fact that the usage of these words on television constitutes an ad for these specific social networking services, showing preferential treatment to them and not others like the French based Skyrock.
Fly Or Die: Windows 8 Tries To Out-Touch Apple
Jun 03, 5:03PM
The debate about Windows 8 rages on in this episode of Fly or Die. CrunchGear editor John Biggs, who joins me from Las Vegas where he is attending a watch conference (don't ask) thinks nothing has really changed because users can always switch back from the touch interface to the old Windows. I appreciate the shell argument, but counter that desktop operating systems are also moving towards more of a touch computing UI anyway. So is this a shell, or is Microsoft trying to get ahead of the curve? Watch the video, and tell us what you think. 
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