Friday, October 28, 2011

Y! Alert: TechCrunch

Yahoo! Alerts
My Alerts

The latest from TechCrunch

The New Google TV: 4 Demo Videos Including Looks At The New Apps Top
Google just announced the major refresh of Google TV. It adds a bunch of new features to the platform including Android Market and a TV & Movies. I'm not entirely sure this new coat of paint will help sell the house per se, but it will certainly make the current owners happy. The update will slowly hit existing Google TV units starting with the Sony models on Sunday with the Logitech boxes getting it shortly thereafter. As with most mass roll outs, you might be waiting in line awhile until a spot opens on the server. Thankfully Google released these demo videos that show off a bunch of the new features to pass the time.
 
Google TV Update Rolls Out On Sunday: Better Content Discovery, Android Market, But Hulu Is Still Blocked Top
google-tv-logo-v2Google TV is finally ready for prime time a year after it officially launched. Starting on Sunday, the update will first roll out to the Sony Internet TV units with the Logitech Revue units getting it shortly thereafter. Existing users will probably love the update as it brings a redesigned interface and a selection of the Android Market. It seems to be exactly what the platform should have been when it launched last year. But for everyone else, either those looking to cut the cord or supplement pay TV with Internet video, it's still a tough sell. All the downfalls associated with Google TV a year ago still exist. While the system might not be half-baked anymore, I'm still not sure if Google TV deserves a place in your living room.
 
New Startup Accelerator Gen Y Capital Partners Will Fund Young Entrepreneurs, Pay Off Student Loans Top
GYCThis week, with support from the White House and the Obama administration, the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) announced the launch of a new startup accelerator and investment company, Gen Y Capital Partners. The new program will provide seed capital for tech startups created by Gen Y'ers (those under the age of 35). Like many accelerators, Gen Y Capital Partners (GYC) will provide mentoring, education, and assistance with living expenses. But the best part of the program? Getting in means getting rid of your federal student loan debt.
 
Pictured: The (Ridiculous) BlackBerry Porsche P'9981 Top
gallery-3anglesI promise I'll stop harping on RIM for a while, but I couldn't resist -- the BlackBerry Porsche P'9981's product page has gone live, and it affords us several new looks at the silliest-looking RIM device in recent memory.
 
YC-Funded Ridejoy: Make Some Dough On Your Next Roadtrip (And Maybe Some New Friends) Top
ridejoylogoLooking to take a trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles without putting a major dent in your wallet? Ridejoy, a YC-backed startup that's launching today, might have exactly what you're looking for. The service allows drivers who are already planning to take a roadtrip to 'sell' their extra seats to other users. The net result: drivers earn money on trips they were planning on taking anyway, and Ridejoy passengers get a door-to-door lift, in some cases for less than they'd pay for a bus ticket. You may have seen Ridejoy before, at least in an early form: it did a one-off trial for Burning Man this year with BurningManRides.com — a site that helped people coordinate their trips out to the Nevada desert. 1600 people signed up, 1150 rides were posted, and 400 rides were completed over a three-week span. In a neat twist, five pilots offered rides-by-air, completing a total of ten plane trips.
 
Keen On … Failure Is The Ultimate Rebirth (TCTV) Top
Ooyala Backlot Web-7In Silicon Valley, failure has been democratized. You don't need a lot of money to fail. Nor do you need any previous experience. Take, for example, Brian Wong and Roger Dickey – two young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who, in spite of their youth, are already steeped in failure. Wong, who was the youngest person ever to receive venture capital funding and is now the CEO of the mobile rewards network Kiip, once worked at Digg – the paragon of a failed Silicon Valley technology start-up. While Dickey managed to build 16 sixteen (yes, that's SIXTEEN) failed Facebook apps before getting lucky with Mafia Wars. When I spoke to Wong and Dickey earlier this week at FailCon, they both embraced the idea of failure. It's all about "mental resilience", they told me. Every setback is a "learning opportunity", they said, and they described failure as "the ultimate rebirth". Great failures of the past include Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers, they explained, while Groupon's Andrew Mason and Zynga's Mark Pincus are today's heroic failures, guys who failed so fast and frequently that in the end that had to get something right.
 
Judge Dismisses Class Action Lawsuit Over Facebook's Friend Finder Feature Top
facebookA class action lawsuit filed against Facebook over its FriendFinder feature was dismissed yesterday by a California federal judge. In the case of Robyn Cohen, et al. v. Facebook, a group of the network's members alleged that Facebook misappropriated users' names and likenesses to promote its Friend Finder service, which suggests new Facebook friends to a user who chooses to upload his or her email contacts. The Robyn Cohen case was actually dismissed previously on June 28, 2011, but the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint. Thursday's order dismissed this complaint. The judge ruled that the plaintiffs did not show any economic harm from Facebook's alleged use of their names and likenesses.
 
The iPhone 4S Has Been Jailbroken Top
jailbroken4SListen up, fanboys, because this is one you won't want to miss. The iPhone 4S has been officially jailbroken. iClarified reports that the iPhone Dev-Team found a way to get Cydia running on both the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2, though the jailbreak is "VERY preliminary." There are still big pieces missing and plenty of work left to do, so unfortunately the jailbreak won't be released to the public. The jailbreak is also said to work for the iPad 2, and there's a video to prove it.
 
Facebook Sees 600,000 Compromised Logins Per Day Top
facebookNew figures from Facebook reveal how often the social networking site's users are hacked. In the blog post announcing the forthcoming "Trusted Friends" feature, Facebook also an included infographic detailing Facebook's security measures. One figure in particular jumped out at security researchers: every day, "only .06%" of Facebook's 1 billion logins are compromised. Or, to put it another way, 600,000 logins per day are compromised.
 
RIM's PlayBook Push: Buy Two, Get One Free Top
3playbookRIM's ailing PlayBook has seen its fair share of price cuts at your local big box retailers, but here's a deal just for all you businessfolk out there. From now until the end of the 2011, RIM is running a buy-two-get-one-free deal on their tablets through their network of authorized resellers.
 
Is The Nook Color 2 Launching On November 7th? Top
nook-color-2The Kindle Fire is about to get some major competition and as early as November 7th. The Digital Reader, pretty much the best source online for ebook news, has several sources indicating that B&N will have a large announcement on November 7th. The next Nook Color is expected to headline the show. The Nook Color set the standard late last year for enhanced ereaders. By using a color LCD screen and a highly curated Android release, the Nook Color was an instant hit and was no doubt the template for Amazon's Kindle Fire. But Barnes & Noble isn't just going to roll over and let the Fire steal the market it created. Enter the next-gen Nook Color.
 
How Will Apple Do Without "What Would Steve Do"? Top
steve-jobs-apple-I-300x288A few days ago, I wrote about the possibilities for Steve Jobs' final "One more thing..." It seems pretty clear at this point that when he passed away earlier this month, he was still hard at work on a few new products for Apple. One was probably the next iPhone (meaning the one after the just-released iPhone 4S). Two other possibilities include digital textbooks and most notably, an Apple television set. All of this got me thinking. Under Tim Cook and the rest of an extremely experienced and capable executive team, Apple is clearly in good hands going forward. Yes, Apple fell a bit short of Wall Street expectations last quarter, but they still destroyed their own, and next quarter promises to be a blowout. Further, all the talk of Apple's internal university to instill the "Apple way" in employees even without Jobs is good news as well. But the truth is that Apple will not likely face their first true post-Jobs test until they release their first truly new product. That execution will shed light on Apple's future.
 
Nintendo Is Planning In-Game Virtual Item Sales For 3DS Top
nintendo 3dsIt seems factors like the smartphone gaming revolution, the rise of social games, and shrinking video game sales do have an impact on Nintendo's business strategy after all. Various Japanese media, i.e. the country's biggest business daily The Nikkei, are reporting today that Nintendo is planning to offer in-game virtual item sales for 3DS titles. The background here is that Nintendo's sales from its "digital" business (downloads of classic games, for example) currently account for under 5% of the total. This number is much higher for other "traditional" video game makers: Konami, for example, is now making more money with social games (which are very popular in Japan) than with packaged software.
 
Fab.com Nabs Former Etsy VP As COO, Design Within Reach Founder Joins As Advisor Top
fabDesign sales site Fab.com is growing fast; adding nearly 200,000 new members the past 30 days alone, and processing ten thousand plus orders per week. That's impressive for a startup that started an entirely new business centered around online flash sales of design items from scratch in June. Of course to mitigate this growth, the company has to make a few key hires in operations and finance. The company has named Beth Ferreira as its new COO. Prior to joining Fab.com she was a an operations consultant to a number of startups including Birchbox, Pixable, JOOR, Nestio, RedRover Networks, fundedbuy, ofakind, and postling. Before that, Ferreira was VP of Operations & Finance at Etsy and a member of the investment team at VC firm Flatiron Partners. She has also held positions at The Boston Consulting Group and at the Union Bank of Switzerland.
 
The King Has Fallen: Samsung Dethrones Apple As Smartphone Leader Top
chess-king-fallsBefore the Samsung Galaxy Nexus even goes on sale, Samsung has managed to take the lead against Apple to become the largest mobile phone maker by revenue in the third quarter of 2011. Nokia still holds the crown for mobile phone sales by volume, while Apple has dropped behind both to take the number three spot in terms of revenue.
 
Video: Murata Shows Robotic Walking Aid / Shopping Cart Top
Picture 2Japan-based Murata caused quite a splash in the tech world with their awesome unicycle humanoids a while back, and now the company is applying the robot technology used in those machines for something that's not just entertaining to watch. The advanced balancing system in particular is what makes their newly developed "assistance car" so special. As you can see in the video embedded below, the car stands upright on its own without falling over. Thanks to the built-in power assist system, it just takes one finger to make it move forward or back "automatically", making Murata think of turning the prototype into a walking aid, baby carriage, or some sort of shopping cart in the future.
 
Daily Crunch: Hearted Top
1459Here are some of yesterday’s Gadgets stories: Redbox Raises Price On Rentals To $1.20 Microsoft Patents Manipulation Of 3D Virtual Objects, Throwing Gestures Gunnar Optiks Intros Glasses For The Call Of Duty Obsessed Microsoft's Vision Of The Future Includes Touch-Sensitive Everything (And Beautiful People Only) Charted: Android Fragmentation
 
Dublin's Datahug Raises $1.5 Million From Ron Conway, VC Firm Top
datahugEnterprise relationship startup Datahug has scored $1.5 million in a seed funding round led by Ireland-based Oyster Technology Investments, with Silicon Valley super angel investor Ron Conway chipping in. To learn more about its product, check out my earlier post: DataHug Aims To Map Digital Business Relationships.
 
Dear Apple, Please Make My iPhone 4S Battery Life Suck Less Top
iPhone battery drainI think I figured out what the "S" stands for in the iPhone 4S. Now, to be clear, I love my new iPhone 4S. I talk to it even when there isn't a human on the other end of the line. Sometimes it talks back. But one thing that literally sucks about my iPhone 4S is its battery life. And I'm not the only one complaining. Today, my iPhone died after about 8 hours—not even enough to get me through a full day without recharging (and this is typical). This was not 8 hours of constant use (unless you count the constant pinging of notifications, which may be the culprit). It was 8 hours total from the time I unplugged it in the morning and took it with me until the screen went black at around 4 PM.
 
Live in Beijing and Thinking about Starting a Tech Company? Read. This. Post. Now. Top
248795_10150262988282952_8062627951_8966250_1910582_nThe Disrupt Beijing Hackathon starts in a little more than 24 hours, and we've been working hard over the last few days to make it even more of a no-brainer for local Beijing developers to attend. In addition to the chance to be the next GroupMe or win valuable prizes, we have decided to give all Hackathon attendees who complete a hack and present in the 24-hour period free tickets to the Disrupt conference Monday and Tuesday. That's a $1,000-plus value for some hungry coders with a good idea and the desire to make it happen. You don't have to have a team to participate. Just show up and we'll help match you with others.
 

CREATE MORE ALERTS:

Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted

Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope

Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more

News - Only the news you want, delivered!

Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more

Weather - Get today's weather conditions




You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)