Techpreneur News
It seems a given that mobile social networking is going to be “the next big thing”, but squinting at tiny text is still a pain on today’s phones. To deal with this issue, Blabnote, a British startup that is currently in private beta, has created what may be the world’s first “vocal social network.” [...]
It’s coming up on a year since the iPhone was released, and the second version appears to be just around the corner. So it’s a good time to check in with our readers and see just how many of you actually use the device.
Please take a second and let us know where you stand.
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Epic Gillmor Gang today. Everyone went in with guns blazing over the data portability/ownership debate that has spilled out over the Facebook/Google scuffle. DataPortability founder Chris Saad was also on the call, but failed to take a leadership position in the debate (he did, however, weigh in with a blog post on the subject before [...]
Storyblender, which recently launched in private beta, is a new casual animation platform that will appeal to users who want customized movies in a hurry. The site was a presenter at TechCrunch 40. If you’d like to try it out, you can grab one of 500 invites here.
The site is straightforward, which is [...]
Condé Nast has acquired popular technology blog Ars Technica (ranked #5 all time on the BloggerBoard), we’ve confirmed. The site will become part of Wired Digital (which in turn is under CondéNet, run by Sarah Chubb). Wired Digital assets include Wired.com and Reddit (acquired in 2006). The acquisition price will not be disclosed, but our [...]
Chicago’s Fox affiliate WFLD has launched AirFox Live, a mashup whose spec list reads like a technophile’s pipe dream. The site combines a helicopter, GPS, live video, and Google Maps to produce a realtime data stream of the network’s newscopter that serves as uniquely informative eye-candy.
Live video taken from the helicopter’s cameras are displayed [...]
Just over a week ago the founders of and five engineers from VoIP services provider Jangl left for Jajah after the company failed to find a proper suitor. Following their departure, it was unclear what would happen to Jangl’s assets and remaining staff. Now we hear from multiple sources close to the deal that Live [...]
Google’s Bob Lee creates a much better image to go with our post yesterday about One Laptop Per Child and Windows teaming up. More at CrunchGear.
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One Laptop Per Child
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Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
ZYB, a mobile social network that we gave high marks to in August 2007, has been acquired by Vodafone for €31.5 million, or about $50 million. The company had raised just €3 million in venture capital.
ZYB was smart in how they built their service. At first they were a simple address book backup-to-web service. But [...]
The scuffle today between Facebook and Google has very little to do with user privacy and everything to do with user control. A huge battle is underway between Google, MySpace and Facebook around control of user profiles and, therefore, users themselves. And their three new products, Data Availability, Facebook Connect, and Friend Connect, are all [...]
With LiMo’s recent announcement that Verizon had hopped onto their Board of Directors, things are starting to heat up between the LiMo platform and Google’s competing product, Android. Both are open-source Linux-based platforms, and both are aiming to rock the handset market sometime in the next year or so.
LiMo is Linux-based. Android is Linux-based. [...]
He was pretty careful about what he would and wouldn’t talk about, but former Twitter Chief Architect Blaine Cook bravely faced the Gillmor Gang today to talk about the challenges facing Twitter, the feasibility of a decentralized Twitter competitor, and other Twitter related issues. The timing is perfect, as big media is starting to take [...]
Today Plazes CEO Felix Petersen gave us a peek at iPlazer, the upcoming iPhone client for the geo-tagging social networking site. The app will be available when Apple’s official App Store launches in mid June. Plazes has been around for a while - it was one of the first companies to be covered [...]
A source has informed us that Google plans to announce the replacement of its Mini Search Appliance with a new enterprise search solution called Hosted Site Search in the next few days.
We hear it will be a for-pay product that, as the name suggests, will allow businesses to search their websites and other data stores [...]
One thing Citi analyst Kevin Mahaney didn’t know about earlier this week in his very optimistic sales estimates for the Kindle: Jennifer Aniston is apparently a fan. At least, that’s what it looks like in the picture above published by US Weekly (that is the first time and also the last time that publication will [...]
Next month GigaOM will hold Structure 08, a conference centered on the changing face of computing infrastructure. The event will discuss the wave of cloud computing technology that has been driving a revolution in web applications and has started to overthrow the notion of conventional servers.
Structure 08 will feature a workshop on Google App [...]
One Laptop Per Child will ship a special version of Windows on their low cost laptops for poor children, the two companies announced this afternoon. Previously the laptops, which to date have been tested in a number of countries, ran only Linux. Trials of the Windows version of the machines will begin in June in [...]
More details on Facebook’s banning of Google Friend Connect from the Facebook API earlier today. I spoke with Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly and Google’s Director of Engineering David Glazer about the banning to get a fuller picture of the conflict.
Here’s an example of how Friend Connect (more details) works in practice. A third [...]
Last month we ran a brief post introducing Spellr.us, a service that monitors websites for spelling errors. Little was known about the site at the time - all we had to go by was a teaser splash page. The site has finally entered a private beta, and it shows a lot of potential. [...]
Yeah that’s right. I have a puppet parody now, too. This is pretty tame stuff compared to the hit job Loren did on Shel israel. Before you hit play, note that there is some offensive language in the video, referring to our recent dispute with Wired.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets [...]
Victory Darwin
created this social network on Ning. 
