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Meet The Disrupt SF 2012 Hackathon Hackers
Sep 09, 6:09AM
Every Disrupt we like to walk around the hall and meet with the uber-cool hackers who have dedicated their lives to making cool stuff in less than a day. We cornered five hackers and asked them what they were working on, what their biggest problem has been so far, and who would they consider a hacker hero. Their answers appear below, uncensored, unadulterated, and completely candid.Some Thoughts On The Y Combinator/Google Ventures Mess
Sep 09, 2:41AM
TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington has written a very levelheaded and fair analysis of Paul Graham's "Google Ventures" email leak and the media "he said, she said" that followed. Gearing up for Disrupt, TechCrunch didn't cover the "story." Maybe we should have? I personally didn't cover it because there seemed like there was no "there" there. The beef is best summed up by what Arrington writes here, "It is absolutely fine for a venture firm to offer whatever they want to a startup, and it's absolutely fine for the startup to not accept that offer and move on."Amazon Kindle HD Will Allow Users To Opt-Out Of "Special Offers" For $15
Sep 09, 12:45AM
If you've been put off by the (arguably obtrusive) Special Offers on the Kindle Fire HD, Amazon has just announced that they will allow users to pay $15 to opt-out of the ads for the life of the device. An Amazon spokesperson wrote: We know from our Kindle reader line that customers love our special offers and very few people choose to opt out. We're happy to offer customers the choice.
Who Moved Apple's Cheese? The Role Of The Knock-Off Effect In Innovation
Sep 09, 12:11AM
Chris Hawker, the founder of Trident Design, LLC, has over 20 years of experience developing and commercializing his own and others' inventions. His most famous product, the PowerSquid, was the subject of a six-part series published in TechCrunch called the Song of the PowerSquid. As the president/founder of Trident Design, LLC, I've been inventing and commercializing products for 18 years, and all the successful ones get knocked-off.Hacker Uses A Kinect To Help His Mom Email After A Stroke
Sep 08, 11:10PM
Here's a heartwarming story for a Hackathon Saturday: Chad Ruble's mother suffers from aphasia due to a stroke. She hasn't been able to use a keyboard for years because she is simply unable to recognize text. In order to help her, he built a Kinect-enabled interface that lets her move her hand around a series of simple icons - happy, sad, upset, etc. - and other icons that signify degree. After swiping around the screen a bit, she was finally able to send an email using a few simple hand motions. She was overjoyed.Babelverse Lands Seed Round Led By 500 Startups For Human-Powered Online Translation
Sep 08, 11:06PM
Babelverse, the language translation startup that landed the title of "Audience Choice" at Disrupt NYC this past May, has raised a seed round led by 500 Startups along with a group of other angel investors. Babelverse's online marketplace provides speech translation services in close to real-time through a worldwide network of human interpreters. Today, Babelverse co-founders Josef Dunne and Mayel de Borniol tell me, its team of nearly 4,000 interpreters spans more than 100 countries and currently covers 642 languages (seriously, I am not sure that I knew there were that many.) We at TechCrunch are actually using Babelverse to translate the live webcast of next week's Disrupt SF conference into 12 languages.The Disrupt SF 2012 Hackathon Is On Like Donkey Kong
Sep 08, 10:39PM
It's that time of year again. Pencils are being sharpened, school buses are making their rounds, and hackers are coding to their little hearts' desire. The Disrupt SF Hackathon has officially commenced, with over 400 hackers in attendance and over 35 different API sponsors, including AT&T, Nokia, Loku and Ford. Each hacker and/or team gets 24 hours to develop and product, hacking through the night until noon tomorrow. You can be assured that Red Bull and beer will be a sizable part of these coders' nutritional equation.Spotify Will Launch A Browser-Based Version
Sep 08, 9:51PM
If you're wondering why the Spotify desktop software has hardly been updated in a year, it's because the company is preparing to launch a completely overhauled browser-based version of its streaming music service, multiple sources confirm. Along with moving to the web, the redesign will focus more on discovery, including following the listening habits and playlists of influencers in addition to your friends. One source even said a lower subscription price for its mobile app could be in the works. With a healthy user base and the record labels' support, the browser version could help Spotify continue dominating the streaming music spotlight.Retinize Any Mac App With Retinizer
Sep 08, 9:18PM
If you're using non-Retina-ready apps like Word and you'd like to see things in a clearer light, there's an app for that. Retinizer is a very simple app that allows you to update standard Mac applications to support Retina displays. Mostly this means that the fonts are much sharper but icons and UI elements are often still fuzzy. For example, Word looks much better after Retinization although the rulers and buttons are still janky. It didn't work with Air apps very well and some apps didn't update at all, including BBEdit and Twitter.Instagram For Video—Massive Market Opportunity, Yes! Done Right, No!
Sep 08, 8:00PM
Oh, to become the Instagram for video! THAT is the dream of scores of new tech start-ups. And, that is the holy grail for all the VCs who continue to plow money into those companies. After all, Facebook just dropped a cool $1 billion on Instagram (well, actually closer to $700 million) – and each of us can now easily capture pristine HD video on our smart phones that we carry at all times. That means personal HD video capture anytime, anywhere, and without any pre-planning. The sheer volume of personal UGC video has exploded. The potential market opportunity is massive. And, it is ripe. If it only were that easy.Preparation For Apple's iPhone Event Is Underway
Sep 08, 6:08PM
If you've been paying attention at all, you know that the next iPhone is right around the corner. Apple has sent out invites to a September 12 event — that's on Wednesday, by the way — just as we've long expected. The event is to be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, which just so happens to be located right next to the hotel we're staying at for Disrupt (Hackathon begins today, by the way). In proper Apple fashion, the company has already begun preparation for the announcement event, hanging a massive Apple banner outside of the huge event center.Just Picture It: The Imagesphere
Sep 08, 5:00PM
Editor's Note: This guest post was written by Bob Lisbonne, CEO of in-image advertising company Luminate. He was previously a General Partner at Matrix Partners, and worked at Netscape Communications, where he was the senior vice president and general manager of its browser division. Images shock, delight, inspire and provoke. They grab our emotions in ways that text simply cannot. Would Facebook be Facebook without photos? You want to see what's going on in the lives of your "friends," not just read a status update. Images also drive the entire ecommerce movement. Can you imagine purchasing a sweater online without seeing a picture of it first? No matter how great of a description, it doesn't make you click the "add to my cart" button – the photo does.Gillmor Gang: Silver Bullet Theory
Sep 08, 5:00PM
The Gillmor Gang — Danny Sullivan, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — handicap the latest entries in the Tablet Stakes. It feels like a game of musical chairs, with three chairs and four tablet platforms. When the music stops, Apple, Amazon, and Google are sitting pretty, with Microsoft missing a business model to finance the Surface. The iPhone 5 launch next week looms large(r) than life, but all the exciting action is in the 7-inch form factor. Amazon may seem attractive to the reading crowd, and Apple (TV) to the big screeners, but Nexus 7 has turned my iPhone into mostly a hotspot. The Gang seems primed for the move to the sequential device model, but for now the one device for all mirage fits the Silver Bullet Theory, that Clint's Invisible Chair can win by staying just out of sight.We Have All Become Parallel Gamers
Sep 08, 4:00PM
If you really want to become a hated figure in GamerVille, predict the doom of single player games. This is territory that Frank Gibeau from Electronic Arts inadvertently strayed into this week when he declared that he now only commissions games that connect to the cloud. The gaming press in general read this as EA saying it would no longer make single player games like Mass Effect, and went crazy. And yet Gibeau is right. Single player gaming all by itself is slowly slipping into the past, to be replaced by something else. Not some half-dreamed half-TED-talk fueled craziness about constant gaming in the future instead of life, but something connected nonetheless. Something hard to pin down, but which is definitely real. Some sort of ambient connection which brings the game together for players and makes it just that little bit more of a world. In two words: parallel games.Learn Or Die: A Primer
Sep 08, 3:00PM
Editor's Note: The guest post was written by Craig Malloy, the CEO of Bloomfire, a knowledge sharing tool for the modern workforce. Malloy previously served as Founder/CEO of ViaVideo (acquired by Polycom), and the Founder/CEO of LifeSize (acquired by Logitech). You can follow him on Twitter here. Behind most productivity problems is a learning problem. Productivity is a loaded term for good reason. We've seen an endless parade of newfangled systems and near-religious dogma -- high aspirations and endlessly failing experiments. We've been there and we've done that.Sock Puppet Spectacular: Are Online Reviews Completely Worthless, Or Only Mostly Worthless?
Sep 08, 1:00PM
"Nicodemus Jones" was a big fan of bestselling crime author RJ Ellory. His five-star Amazon reviews of Ellory's books were littered with phrases like "modern masterpiece", "will touch your soul", "a magnificent book." He was less kind to Mark Billingham and Stuart MacBride, both of whom were victims of one-star reviews by "Jones." Last week, author Jeremy Duns found out why: "Jones" was actually Ellory himself. He was following an old and well-worn trail. In July, Duns outed another bestselling author, Stephen Leather, as a sock-puppeter. Some years ago, Amazon accidentally revealed a clutch of other authors praising their own work and ripping into others'. Since then, hundreds of other authors have simply bought fake five-star reviews by the dozen. It's not just books. The same thing happens with app stores, and Yelp. Even the honest reviews are mostly written by people who are stupid, or blinded by fury, or both. It really makes you wonder whether online reviews are only mostly worthless, or actually completely worthless.Twitter's API Crackdown May Be Bad For Users, Even If They Never Notice
Sep 08, 11:09AM
This week Twitter launched its new API. There are still lots of questions about what this means for developers, and what role developers have played in Twitter's rise. But the general consensus seems to be that it doesn't matter much for most users. Apparently most users just use Twitter's official clients and supposedly will never notice if Twitter bans most third party clients. Even if that's true, I think it's a real shame for the future of social media.Defining A Growth Hacker: 5 Ways Growth Hackers Changed Marketing
Sep 08, 5:00AM
The Internet has been the most disruptive vehicle in modern memory, changing everything from the way we buy shoes to the way we connect with friends. The profession of marketing has no less transformed over the last two decades. As social platform adoption became prolific, growth hacking spawned and changed the way startups thought about marketing and growth. With an emphasis on data, product, and being "lean", growth hackers are challenging the underlying assumptions of marketing.Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Is Going To Keep Up The Disruption At Disrupt SF
Sep 08, 3:36AM
You might have heard of Uber and its quest to transform the way we transport ourselves from one place to another. You might have also heard that the company has faced some challenges along the way, challenges to which it didn't and still doesn't flinch. You also also might have heard that the company now faces some stiff competition, and is making adjustments accordingly. Disrupt! (We love that word.)Ad Tech Team Up: Clever On Demand Acquires AudienceFUEL And Will Use Its Name
Sep 08, 3:14AM
Clever On Demand, a company whose technology allows publishers to manage multiple ad networks, has acquired AudienceFUEL, a publisher-to-publisher marketing platform (more on what that means in a second). The price of the acquisition wasn't disclosed, but the combined company will do business as AudienceFUEL (which does seem like the better name). Clever On Demand founder and CEO Troy McConnell will serve as CEO, while AudienceFUEL CEO Al Silverstein will be president and chief revenue officer. And as part of the deal, Active International has made an additional investment in AudienceFUEL.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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