Blogged, the blog directory that we introduced last February, has launched a news portal that aspires to hand-pick the most interesting stories from across the blogosphere. The company has employed a team of editors to identify trends and popular stories from around the web, which are presented in categories that include technology, entertainment, politics, [...]
Just because the Internet makes it possible to offer a near-infinite inventory of goods for sale does not mean that consumers will start wanting more obscure items in any great numbers. That is the conclusion Harvard Business School associate professor Anita Elberse comes to in a recent article in the Harvard Business Review that [...]
Update: This batch sold out in 20 minutes. We will release one more smaller batch in the coming weeks. We are releasing the next batch of 200 tickets to the 3rd annual August Capital MeetUp on Friday, July 25, 2008, in Menlo Park, California. Our last release of tickets sold out in less than [...]
Yelp, a user-generated database of customer reviews of local businesses, first launched in October 2004. Users rate and leave reviews for local businesses, participate in forums, and can generally get social around local businesses.Yelp almost immediately caught on organically in San Francisco, but founders Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons ran into some early criticism. Rumors [...]
First off, if you love Baseball, skip this post for a minute and go claim one of the 1,000 beta accounts we have for Baseball Boss - click “register” on the top left and use the code “techcrunch” to get in. Then come back here and see why you’ll be glad you did.Baseball Boss is [...]
It turns out the battle for control of Twitter rests almost exclusively in the unique value proposition of XMPP-served track. As Twitter strips away various features of its service to rebuild a scalable fail-whale -proof version, the one remaining hurdle is restoration of a fully-functional Track over IM. For the last two weeks, a one-way [...]
Web video startup PLYmedia recently raised a round of $6 million to $6.5 million, according to a source with knowledge of the deal. The funding has not yet been announced, but the investors are believed to be Greylock and Elron Electronic Industries, an Israeli holding company. (In fact, Elron already disclosed its investment in [...]
We’re one week away from the debut of the 3G iPhone, and the question on everyone’s mind seems to be, “What’s going to happen to the six million first-gen iPhones that are on the fast track to obsolescence?” The iPhone - the ultimate in “cool” for the last twelve months - is about to [...]
There is nothing more annoying than trying to use up your hard-earned frequent-flyer miles only to be told that the flight you want has no frequent flier seats available. Many airlines block out seats and dates for frequent-flyer eligibility. And their sites make it especially difficult to find out which flights have such [...]
Reader Steve has been chatting with Apple.com CSRs today - he’s already talked to two - and they’ve both confirmed my worst fears: you will not be able to order the IP3G online and it will only be available in stores and it will be activated in-store, provided you wish to purchase it at contract [...]
Mike Butcher at TechCrunch UK reports:Word has reached me that Netherlands-based Nimbuzz, the mobile VoIP and IM startup that extends into social networks, has raised $15 million in a second round led by Naspers/MIH, with Nimbuzz’s other major existing investor Mangrove Capital Partners also participating. It’s already had $10 million from Mangrove (the original Skype [...]
In the last few months we’ve seen a number of startups introduce drag-and-drop support for advertising, allowing users to monetize their blogs with a minimum amount of effort. The latest to join the fray is ScribeFire, a popular Firefox plugin that allows users to create and modify their blogposts from a window that is [...]
With all the news yesterday around Tesla Motors signing a deal with Governor Schwarzenegger to manufacture its next electric sedan in California instead of New Mexico (see video), a potentially much bigger deal slipped by almost unnoticed. German magazine AutomobilWoche is reporting that Tesla will be supplying lithium ion batteries to Mercedes. The [...]
It’s no secret that Evite sucks. It’s cluttered, it unnecessarily withholds information from email messages in order to drive page hits, and it looks like it hasn’t seen a facelift in about a decade.The latest company to take on the much-maligned site is Anyvite, a Y Combinator-funded startup that launches today. Anyvite has taken [...]
Today is basic math day at CrunchGear where we discovered that if 160 bytes of SMS data costs twenty cents then 1MB (1,048,576 bytes) of data would cost 131,072 cents, or $1,310.72.Check out the prices for a text message plan on AT&T, the exclusive carrier of the iPhone 3G in the United States. AT&T wants [...]
