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Thumb Offers A Reality Test For SXSW Winners
Mar 18, 3:16AM
Every year, before, during, and after South by Southwest, everyone's eager declare someone the winner of the conference. Then comes the inevitable backlash, with questions about whether Popular App X will ever catch on with "regular people" — or if it's just useful to techies who are constantly checking their iPhones in search of the next party. For the second year in a row, mobile Q&A app Thumb (formerly known as Opinionaided) is offering its own take. It made a list of the apps that seemed to be getting buzz at the conference, then polled its users on whether they actually used the apps. The results (there were 4,700 responses total, with at least 220 for each question) are being pitched as an answer to the question, "Which SXSW Apps Do Real Americans Actually Use?"Robert Scoble Talks Startups And The Changing Face Of SXSW [TCTV]
Mar 18, 1:30AM
Earlier this week, TechCrunch TV hosted a live show from the floor of the convention center at the South By Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas and we were really pleased to have technology evangelist and early-stage startup hunter Robert Scoble as a guest. Watch the video above to hear Scoble's thoughts on how SxSWi has grown over the past decade from a few "geeks off in the corner" to a massive gathering, what apps he's most excited about right now (Highlight gets a mention), his time on the StartupBus, why he's still bullish on Google+, the kind of startup pitch he's sick of hearing, and lots more.The Real SXSW "Winner" Is The Mophie Juice Pack
Mar 18, 12:54AM
So Highlight didn't "win" SXSW, as some tech bloggers had hypothesized, for many reasons. It did however have a close relationship to what eventually ended up winning, as its background GPS turns out to significantly strain iPhone battery life. Even before SXSW, users were reporting notable reduction in battery charge when using Highlight, on average going from two days to one day of use per full charge while the app is running. In the mobile app battleground that is SXSW Interactive, the battery drain was even more pronounced. People crowded round the charging stations some startups had set up. "ABC: Always be charging," was a running joke amongst techies. At some point I even saw a woman at a restaurant using a charger as a scrunchie.DIY SEO Startup BrandYourself Has Nearly 6,000 Sign-Ups
Mar 18, 12:30AM
BrandYourself made the famous startup pivot earlier this month, and now it's sharing some data about the initial results. The company started out as a way for people to control the impression they made online, both through search results and on social networks. It even recommended articles that you could read and share in your chosen subject area. Co-founder and CEO Patrick Ambron says his team eventually realized that the approach was "too much," and that "the one BIG thing people loved about us was helping them improve their search results."Fear And Loathing In Online Video
Mar 17, 11:00PM
The story of Hollywood's relationship with technology reads like an on-again-off-again soap opera romance: initial feelings of fear, panic and jealousy followed by amity and intense attraction, followed, in turn, by more fear, jealousy and heated exchanges. Back in the early 1980s, MPAA President Jack Valenti went before Congress and asked them to outlaw the VCR. His graphic language infamously went so far as to compare new TV tech to the Boston Strangler.Mike Daisey Says His Show Is "True" Even If It's Not True
Mar 17, 10:30PM
The episode and transcript of the This American Life episode retracting Mike Daisey's piece about Apple and Foxconn are now live. If this is an issue you care about, you should listen to the whole thing. As host Ira Glass announced yesterday, the show found "significant fabrications" in the story, to the point where "we can't vouch for its truth." For example, Daisey admits that he never met a worker who had been poisoned by n-hexane, as he claimed in the episode (which was a version of his one-man show "The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.") Many other aspects of Daisey's account, like his meeting with allegedly underage Foxconn workers, were also disputed by his translator, although Daisey still says that they happened. In a blog post, Daisey says he stands by his work, but he regrets allowing TAL to excerpt the show because it's "not journalism."Up Next For Brit Morin's Geek-Chic Lifestyle Brand: Custom Apps [TCTV]
Mar 17, 10:00PM
The last time TechCrunch checked in with Brittany Morin was in mid-November 2011, when the former Googler had just debuted her own lifestyle brand, Brit Media, aimed at positioning herself as the "Martha Stewart of Silicon Valley." So TechCrunch TV caught up with her earlier this week in Austin, Texas at the South By Southwest Interactive conference to find out how things have been shaping up since the launch and what her plans are for the months ahead.Pair Programming Considered Extremely Beneficial
Mar 17, 8:00PM
Farhan Thawar is the VP Engineering of Toronto's Xtreme Labs. This post is a response to (former Xtremer) Jon Evans's Pair Programming Considered Harmful? You're in a car driving 100 miles per hour on a dirt road. The turns are 100º hairpins and there are inclines and dips that would make a normal car's shocks fall right off their axles. Lucky for you, you're not alone. You have a partner. Because there are two of you, you can split the responsibilities of getting to the finish line first – in one piece.Rejoice, Twitter Power Users: "Next Generation" Tweetdeck Apps Coming For Android And iOS
Mar 17, 7:20PM
The big Twitter redesign at the end of last year seemed to mean that the company was ditching power users to get more mainstream. The website and the mobile apps added "Connect" and "Discover" pages to help new users find interesting people and topics. But the unified new interface buried direct messages and other features that long-time users had grown to rely on. However, Twitter has not forgotten about its devoted base of hardcore users. You know, the types who like to do things like DM, or make custom lists of 0ther users to track. It's working on "next generation" mobile apps under the Tweetdeck brand.Why Mobile Operators Are Becoming Mad Men
Mar 17, 6:15PM
The characters on AMC's television show Mad Men and the real-life mobile operators of today are pretty much the same. Both could enjoy cigars and martinis while business runs as usual, living as kings of their respective business worlds. But in 2012, both Madison Avenue and the mobile carrier world are getting turned on their heads by the likes of Google and Facebook. Both industries are re-inventing themselves as we speak, and the good news is they actually need each other to help them survive and thrive. Mad Men's main character, Don Draper, famously said "Advertising is about one thing: happiness." Earlier this month, we saw one of the most interesting moves in digital media: the mobile operator SingTel purchased mobile ad company Amobee for $321 million in an all-cash deal.Gillmor Gang: TV or Not TV
Mar 17, 5:00PM
The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — pretended to care about Hipswitch, er HighLight while unwrapping Christmas in March's iPad Next. After a somber opening in remembrance of @kevinmarks' father John Marks and Firesign Theatre co-founder Peter Bergman, the Gang got down to brass pixels, the new breed of designer stalker software, and just what Tim Cook has up his sleeve for Christmas in December.The September Problem
Mar 17, 4:00PM
All right. That's it. You kids come in off my lawn, gather round the table, throw a log on the Nest, and hear now a tale of the dread and fabled Time Before The Web. In the beginning1 there was Usenet, and it was good: online conversations ordered by topic, built around ongoing threads rather than individual posts, so that they could and often did last for months. Then came the Web. And eventually, lo, the Web gave us Digg, and it was good, for a while. Then Digg declined. Then there was Reddit, and it was good, for a while. Now Reddit too has declined. Us techies had Slashdot, until it declined. Now we have Hacker News... which is arguably in decline. But at least we have Gawker! No, wait. "Capture the intelligence of the readership? ...That's a joke. For every two comments that are interesting, there will be eight that will be off-topic or toxic," saith none other than Nick Denton himself, re the 'tragedy of the comments'. Ah, but that's just them. Here at TechCrunch, all comments are from incisive, witty people who have both read and understood the article they are commenting on, right? Right? ...Sigh.Why Entrepreneurs Fail And Most Startups Are DOA
Mar 17, 1:00PM
This isn't an anti-entrepreneur rant. It's also not a piece to discourage anyone from launching their own business. It's a warning for those who seek to launch their startup to understand some of the lesser-discussed reasons why 99% of new businesses are Dead On Arrival. As outlined, success is 1) subjective, relative and fluid: i) we define success based on what drives us, ii) but we tend to measure it relative to other people's success and over time, iii) we convince ourselves to change its definition, revising upwards or downwards, depending on the conditions on the ground.Google Wallet's Founding Engineer, Product Lead Already at Work on Next Startup, Tappmo
Mar 17, 5:11AM
More people leaving Google Wallet means more founders for mobile payments startups! Jonathan Wall, a founding engineer on Google Wallet, and Marc Freed-Finnegan, its product lead, are already heads down on their next venture Tappmo after having their last day at Google on March 5. They're not saying too much about what it is aside from saying it's about revolutionizing offline payments. (No surprise there.) "We think the next few years will bring groundbreaking developments in mobile commerce and we are excited to dive in with our new venture," Freed-Finnegan says.Tim "The Freak" Lincecum Co-founds Stealth Startup 12Society, More Celebs To Come
Mar 17, 3:52AM
Back in October 2010, billionaire tech investor Mark Cuban jumped into the daily deals game with a $1.5 million seed investment in gift online shopping deals startup JungleCents. Because the startup took a somewhat alternative approach to daily deals, using a lead generation model to give publishers supplemental revenue streams, today, JungleCents has seen some pretty good traction. Its deals are now reaching 2.2 million email addresses (publishers included), and its sign-up rate tripled in the last three months of 2011. However, at the beginning of this year, Cuban acquired all of the JungleCents assets, allowing the startup's co-founders, Sameer Mehta and Nadir Hyder, to take off to found a new venture. Today, we're getting a bit of a glimpse into what the guys have been working on, as they are officially ready to announce a new startup, called 12Society. Joining Mehta as co-founders of the new venture are Chirayu Patel, a former solutions architect at VMWare, and one slightly more well-known name: San Francisco Giant and two-time Cy Young Award winner, Tim Lincecum.The Agony And Ecstasy Of Mike Daisey
Mar 17, 1:06AM
It seems that noted firebrand Mike Daisey's story - the one about the crippled, underaged factory workers who unspooled tales of woe and torture at the hands of their evil Foxconn masters at Apple's behest - was at least partially fabricated. He was outed as, at best, a bad journalist and at worst a fraud. To be clear, he's a monologist and playwright and had no business telling this story (just as he really had no business telling Amazon's story way back when) but he, like so many creatives, riffed on science and technology for popular effect and got both drastically wrong.Getty Images CEO On Building A Company That Lasts [TCTV]
Mar 17, 12:35AM
Some people are surprised when they find out that Getty Images is just 17 years old -- its brand name has become such an institution in the image licensing and stock photography space that many people assume it's been around for decades longer. But starting in 1995 just at the dawn of the Internet age does make it a veteran in many ways, compared to its much younger peers in the web photo space. So we were pleased to have the chance to interview Getty Images' co-founder and CEO Jonathan Klein while he was at the South By Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas this week to get his insights on how his company has grown up until this point and where it is headed in the months and years to come.Developers: Quick! Get "Retina-Ready" Or Risk Abandonment
Mar 17, 12:05AM
I just got the new iPad in the mail, and naturally the first thing I did was load up a few of my old apps and throw some content on there. Oh god! Oh no! One of my favorite apps, GoodReader, which opens a great variety of files and which I use to consume the enormous PDFs from Google Books, is a patchwork of pixels. My go-to Mahjong game, aliased to hell! Muji notebook - my pencil leaves a chunky trail! Developers, I just want to tell you how critical it is that you upgrade your app to look at least passable on the new displays. The full-on big update can come later. But Apple has thrown your standard-def apps under the bus, and you need to drag yourselves out before your capricious iPad users lose faith.TechCrunch Giveaway: A New iPad! #TechCrunch
Mar 16, 11:43PM
Happy new iPad Friday! All of the new iPads are shipping already and for those of you who ordered a new one online, you should be getting them soon (if you haven't already). So in light of that, and also because it's St. Patrick's Day weekend and what better way to send you off than this -- we have a brand new iPad to give away. Thanks to our friends over at Kabam, we have a new 32GB WiFi Black iPad. The contest will start now and go through this weekend, ending this Sunday at 9:30pm PT. That gives you three days to enter. Once the giveaway is over, we will make sure our winner followed the rules and contact them this weekend. Everyone can enter, as long as you can receive deliverable packages.iPad Launch Brings Back Familiar Faces, "Changes Lives"
Mar 16, 10:18PM
If you're reading this right now, you already know what day it is: iPad day. We headed down to the 5th Ave. flagship store in Manhattan this morning to see just how crazy things would get, but truth be told, the mood was quiet. In fact, the media seemed to be the most raucous, while soon-to-be iPad owners simply tried to keep warm in the freezing mist.If at any time you'd like to stop receiving these messages, just send an email to feeds_feedburner_com_techcrunch+unsubscribe-hmdtechnology=gmail.com@mail.feed2email.net.
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