Category: Tech news

Google has acquired Toronto-based mobile entertainment startup PushLife for close to $25 million dollars, Startup North is reporting. The company, which enabled you to port your iTunes and Windows Media player libraries to non-Apple phones like Android and Blackberry has been gobbled up by the search engine in its attempts to move beyond search.

Founded in 2008 by former RIM employee Ray Reddy, PushLife let you manage wallpapers, music, videos, ringtones and other media on your cell phone until its acquisition, setting out to “build immersive mobile experiences for people to play, organize, share and purchase digital content across multiple devices.” Instead it got bought by Google.

The grab is particularly interesting in light of reports that Google might be launching its own music service soon as one could easily assume that Google would want PushLife to perform a similar function when it gets integrated into the Google engineering team in Canada.

photo © 2007 Francisco Daum | more info (via: Wylio) Last December the FCC approved its “Preserving the Open Internet” regulation to entirely ban blocking of websites or web services by broadband providers, while being vague about what the new restrictions held for mobile carriers like Verizon and AT&T.

As we wrote in December, Republicans had vowed to give the loophole-filled rules hell when the Congress turned more Republican in January, first voting to deny the Commission federal funding in February.

Today we see the fruits of their efforts again, namely the voting through of House Joint Resolution 37, a regulation that would prohibit the FCC  from having any authority over ISPs and broadband, thus overturning December’s regulations.

One-half of the government wanting to revoke your power isn’t cool and I don’t want to necessarily down play the impact of a house vote but, as Wired’s Ryan Singel explains, the vote is indeed largely symbolic.

Historically, the votes for or against Net Neutrality rules have been divided down party lines, and the resolution would have to pass through the Senate to go into effect, which is unlikely as Democrats are in the majority. President Obama has also said he would veto any legislation reversing the rules if passed by Congress, according to the New York Times.

Sure it could take the votes of two-thirds of the members of both Congressional houses to override a Presidential veto.  But as the Senate is currently split 53:47 Democrats to Republicans, and Democrats tend to be pro-Net Neutrality, an Obama veto override seems sort of a stretch.

Supporter of the resolution and Oregon Republican representative Greg Walden told the New York Times, “Congress has not authorized the Federal Communications Commission to regulate the Internet.” Yes, but it as of yet hasn’t yet unauthorized it either. Stay tuned.

There are a number of websites out there that allow you to search for and discover internships. Internships.com, which Charlie Sheen recently used to hire a social media intern, is probably the biggest and most well known of the bunch. But, as anyone who’s used these sites knows, the experience is far from perfect. And the same can be said of job search sites like Indeed.

InternMatch is entering the internship search and discovery market by focusing on small-to-medium-sized businesses and by building a tool that’s easy to use with an eye-catching design. And I think it’s fair to say that a big part of making user experience enjoyable (and simple) is derived not only from the smooth application of the technology that underlies a particular service, but perhaps more importantly, from how its designed.

500 Startups Founder Dave McClure has spoken on many occasions about the importance of good design and yesterday the audacious VC put his money where his mouth is and announced the d.fund, a seed fund dedicated to helping designers start their own businesses. What’s more, just ask Jack Dorsey what he thinks about design.

Yesterday at 500 Startups second demo day, InternMatch launched a site redesign that looks fantastic, and Founder and CEO Andrew Maguire told me that the motivation behind the relaunch has largely been to prioritize ease of use. I’ve had my share of internships and have spent plenty of time on internship sites, and from my experience, search tools and results are generally clunky and ugly, and algorithms are imprecise. Some even take on the feeling of servant farms.

But, in surfing InternMatch’s new website, I found the UI to be smooth and natural, and it also seems as if the startup is ideologically committed to helping both sides of the equation — interns and their prospective employers. Which will be good for business.

InternMatch is attempting to remove some of the barriers to an enjoyable user experience by providing resume and cover letter preparation and templates for free, and by allowing students to search and apply without having to register or sign up.

At this point, InternMatch has limited its offerings to the West Coast, because it wants to jump on the “local” bandwagon. They have seeded college and university campuses up and down the coast with evangelists, who are working to build relationships with departments, professors, student clubs, and the students themselves. These evangelists are InternMatch interns, and the startup provides its interns with marketing training, and helps them build comfort with public speaking, and to plan and launch events.

For employers, InternMatch launched a Community Page yesterday, which aims to go beyond the traditional listing model by allowing SMBs to tell the story of what it’s like to work at their company. When choosing an internship, students want to see videos and photos of the people behind companies — they want to engage and ask questions.

The startup is attempting to do everything it can to humanize the internship search process for students and to allow employers to recruit students who really fit in with their business culture. And, as incentive to employers, if a company does decide to post a listing, InternMatch guarantees that the business will find an intern within 60 days, or it will receive a full refund.

Back in February, InternMatch raised $400K in funding from a bunch of angel investors, including Dave McClure, Mitch Kapor, Kenny Van Zant, and Raj Agarwal. The startup is currently using the funding to expand the team and increase West Coast traction. As to how InternMatch monetize beyond its angel funding? The business model may actually present one drawback and barrier to entry for its target employer base. The startup charges West Coast employers $99 to post a listing on the site. (And its Community Page is an enterprise level subscription offering, with pricing dependent on the size of the company.)

The $99 price tag is high compared to similar services. Internship.com offers free listings, and another cool internship site we wrote about last August, Urban Interns, charges $40, for example.

However, everything remains free to students on InternMatch, and Maguire told me that the startup is working to create exposure and resources for programs like Work Study, which can help reimburse employers who recruit interns with financial aid packages.

He also said, in relation to the great paid/unpaid internship debate over the last five years, that the startup will work with all prospective employers to advocate paid internships, especially those that are likely to turn into full-time jobs. Music to an intern’s ears, to be sure. After all, interns who believe that there is potential for upward mobility within their company are much more inclined to work harder and contribute more.

InternMatch has the design. Now it just needs the good internships.

As regular readers might already know, Paul is in Las Vegas for a month, hanging out with strippers reaffirming his belief in the American dream. As a result, this week’s Why Is This News is even less tech-focused than usual.

Still, no matter whether you subscribe to Sarah’s view that 33 days in Vegas is 33 wasted days or Paul’s insistence that there are still stories to be found on and around the strip, you can watch the whole debate unfold below. (You can also read Paul’s daily Vegas diary on the Huffington Post, and follow his (temporary) Twitter account at @paulgoestovegas.)

And, for those of you who don’t care about Vegas either way: here’s a video of a dog mowing the lawn.

Recent reports that have both Peter Jackson and James Cameron shooting films at 48 frames per second (fps) have attracted a lot of commentary, and as this is a blog that covers trends and bleeding-edge tech, it seems like a synthesis of this discussion is warranted.

Framerate standards sound like a rather dry topic to begin with, but it’s amazing what difference is created by even a minor shift on such supposedly technical grounds. Understanding why framerates are the way they are, and how they are changing, is fundamental to modern media production, and really is a major part of a number of multi-billion-dollar businesses. It’s powerful information, and more importantly, it’s interesting.

Let’s take a look at the psychology and history that have created a worldwide standard for moving images, and examine why this standard is under revision.

Continue reading…

Mark Zuckerberg has finally joined the ranks of Richard Nixon, Bart Simpson, Barack Obama, and Thom Yorke, all folks who have been honored as some of the few celebrities to grace the cover of everyone’s favorite potrzebie title, Mad Magazine.

The cover [Click to embiggen] will complement what will probably be a horribly unfunny piece on the inside of the magazine entitled “The 50 Worst Things About Facebook” and will grace newsstands in about a week.

What’s interesting, I think, is that Mad chose Zuckerberg as a cover-boy at all. While always topical and up-to-date (I remember reading “articles” about Spiro Agnew back when I was a kid and having no idea who he was aside from the fact that his name was an anagram for something dirty), placing a someone who is essentially a business person on the cover is an interesting move, especially for a title that describes itself as “Greasy Kids Stuff.” Obviously Facebook is big with the kids, but how many would know the founder on sight?

I asked Mad’s editor John Ficarra to explain his actions.

TC: Why Mark? Why now?

Ficarra: It was a pure business decision. We got a cool $2 mil from the Winklevoss twins to “poke” him a new one.

TC: What is Mad doing in terms of social media? Do you have a MySpace page?

Ficarra: We don’t have a MySpace page, but we have a very heavy presence on Friendster. Plus, you can usually find us every night…late into the night…on Chatroulette. That’s us with the Zorro mask and the SuperSoaker.

TC: Where is your iPad app? What’s the hold up?

Ficarra: We have a GREAT MAD app! It’s for the Zune and it’s available exclusively at Circuit City. Check it out!

TC: It is my understanding that Mad writers aren’t particularly intelligent. Who spelled Zuckerberg’s name for you?

Ficarra: Any idiot can spell Mark. Duh!

500 Startups first Demo Day sprint is over and people are trickling out their rankings lists of the 23 startups, or “little monsters” as co-founder Dave McClure calls them. McClure, with a background in marketing, has a unique curator’s eye, and his first batch of companies are an interesting brood, to say the least.

Companies that are part of the 500 Startups accelerator program get a 50K investment from the fund at a $1 million valuation and can stay in the 500 Startups offices for 3-6 months. Companies that are part of McClure’s seed program receive up to $250K in seed funding, and McClure has the option of following on in later rounds. All in all the 500 Startups investment stable includes 110 startups, including Twilio, inDinero and Foodspotting.

Between McClure’s accelerator program and his seed investments, 20 companies presented yesterday, and each of them had an unique story. YongoPal had pivoted from a video English language learning service to English language learning photo sharing app (you can’t make this stuff up). MindSnacks and 955 Dreams skipped out on presentations, because they had already closed their investments.

Because some of these crazy kids just might be on to something, I grabbed the TCTV camera crew and interviewed seven of the most interesting companies yesterday. Bear in mind: “Interesting” here doesn’t necessarily mean “will be successful,” just that these are seven to watch (literally).

Visually

Founded by Stewart Langille and Lee Sherman, the team behind Mint’s data visualization efforts, Visually is pretty much the all around Demo Day winner. An impressive presentation and pre-launch partnerships with CNN and Huffington Post mean that we shouldn’t be surprised if their seed round closes before their launch in two weeks.

Baydin

Founded by an engineering and MIT heavy team, Baydin tries to turn the painstaking and tortuous task of answering email into a game, with timing capabilities, Google Calendar integration and rewards. Just one turn in their email game simulator and I had to drag them in for an interview.

Saygent

Saygent is a voice sentiment analysis service that already has brought one of its customers, Comcast over $20 million in annual sales. Using crowd-sourcing technology, the SaaS helps clients identify who is really going to bite and aims to disrupt the call center industry.

Speakergram

At first you might think, who needs conference and speaker matching service Speakergram, and then you look at the list of people and companies who hustler founder Sam Rosen has gotten to sign up: Foursquare, Hipmunk, Eventbrite and LeWeb’s Geraldine LeMeur. Getting influential people to let you handle their speaking engagements sounds like a plan, or at least a start.

Social Stork

Social Stork is a Facebook app for moms and babies zzz … Well until you realize that founder Joel Auge is a high-school dropout millionaire, who was a finalist on Canadian Idol, and already has one successful Facebook-based company HitGrab. So why create another company? Exactly.

CrowdRally

CrowdRally figured out how to monetize the Facebook newsfeed before Facebook did, got a C&D letter and pivoted into a social video sharing product six weeks ago. I smell acquisition bait.

Punchd

Punchd is the simplest yet most disruptive startup of the bunch, and made this list primarily because none of its co-founders could tell me why the startup was interesting when I asked. Well taking customer loyalty cards mobile (“in your pants”) is indeed interesting, because it adds value to users and solves a problem, namely “What am I going to do with all these dog-eared loyalty cards?” Plus the founders “iced” Dave McClure during their pitch meeting, and he still accepted them into the program.

While these seven sparked my interest out of the ones that demo-ed, the other 16 in the cohort are also worth a look — the concept of “interesting,” after all, is in the eye of the beholder. Here they are, in no particular order:

InternMatch — Helping students find internships at startups companies beyond the biggies like Google and Facebook.

Spoondate – A social network for people who want to meet over a meal, with group dining options.

Rewardli — A group buying platform for small business.

Wednesdays — A LinkedIn and lunches, a platform that lets you organize your networking over meals.

YongoPal — Learn English while sharing photos with international friends.

Ninua — A news viewing app with a social bent.

Volta — Helps companies test their live phone marketing calls.

955 Dreams — New media publishing  with a Music and Education focus.

myGengo – Crowd-sourced translation services.

GinzaMetrics — An SaaS for SEO and social media optimization.

AwayFind — An email notification system for urgent messages.

Evoz – A mobile baby monitor.

WorkersNow – A hiring platform for blue collar workers.

MotionMath — A way to make math learning fun for kids, by making it mobile.

ReadyForZero — Online software that helps you track credit card debt.

I was originally going to write something like “Weekend Giveaway: An iPod Classic Case Plus Something Else” and then make you guys read the whole post to find out that I was going to include a Blackberry Playbook in the prize and then you’d be angry and come to my house and stuff and nobody wanted that. So here goes: we’re going to give you one lucky reader a Blackberry Playbook. It won’t ship until the official release date – April 19 – but it will be one of the first Playbooks to roll off the assembly lines.

Entering, as you probably know by now, is simple.

Read more…

I can’t recall Google pushing a product as hard as they’ve pushed Hotpot on their blogs in recent months. I swear that on a daily basis there’s some sort of update about “what’s new with Hotpot”. The only problem? I have basically no idea what Hotpot is. I mean, I sort of do, but it’s such a bad name and it’s a product that seems to overlap with other Google products, so I just don’t get it. And now I don’t have to.

Google is killing off the Hotpot name, as they’re announcing in about five blog posts today. But they’re not killing the product itself — instead, it will now reside as a part of Google Places. They’re calling it a “graduation”. I’m calling it a “gorging”. And it’s definitely the right move.

Says Google:

It’s been incredibly exciting to watch Hotpot grow—the community has quickly expanded to millions of users who are rating more than one million times per month and enjoying a truly personalized view of the world. Based on this success, we’ve decided to graduate Hotpot to be a permanent part of our core local product offering, Google Places. Rolling Hotpot into Google Places helps simplify the connection between the places that are rated and reviewed and the more than 50 million places that already have an online presence through Google Places—places that millions of people search for and find every day on Google.

They then take a paragraph to explain the name once again. It’s about “shared eating experiences” or something. The fact that this name has had to be explained a few times now says just about all you need to know as to why it’s now going away. Is it Hot Potato reborn? Is it Hotspot? Hot Pocket? Some sort of marijuana reference? Why is this different from Google Places? Well now, it’s not.

All those Hotpot updates will now flow through the Google Places blog — where they probably belonged in the first place.

Messaging apps that let you use your smartphone to text or chat with your friends or even large groups of people, often free of charge, are red hot. We’ve heard from a reliable source that one of the companies making waves in the space, WhatsApp, has just secured $8 million in financing from Sequoia Capital, and possibly other investors.

WhatsApp enables users of iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Nokia Symbian60 devices to exchange text messages, images, audio and even video messages with one another.

I have no idea how many users or downloads WhatsApp has attracted to date, as the company prefers to keep a low profile, but I’ve heard the name of the app drop in several conversations I’ve had about the mobile messaging space.

I was actually quite surprised to find that they weren’t funded yet, especially with the track record of their co-founders, who established the company back in 2009.

WhatsApp was founded by Jan Koum, who formerly managed the Platform Operations team responsible for the critical internal pieces of Yahoo’s infrastructure, and Yahoo’s former VP of Engineering Brian Acton.

Another former Yahoo exec, the company’s ex-Senior Engineering Manager Charles Kung describes himself as an investor and advisor to the company on LinkedIn.

Some signs that the app has already gotten some traction on the market: its iPhone app has received 28,040 ratings and hundreds of reviews on iTunes, while its Blackberry app has garnered 4,050 reviews.

Sequoia recently participated in a $10 million round of funding for Bubble Motion, which offers a popular Twitter-like voice blogging service in India, Japan, and Indonesia, and has also invested in mobile communications company Clickatell.

Other developers of similar mobile messaging apps have received funding in the past: Kik Interactive raised $8 million from RRE Ventures, Spark Capital, and Union Square Ventures, while GroupMe secured over $11 million in funding from investors like Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Betaworks and SV Angel, and textPlus raised $15 million from GRP Partners, Matrix, and Kleiner Perkins.

Other contenders include Fast Society, which has raised $275,000 in seed financing from ENIAC Ventures and Quest Venture Partners, and GroupFlier, which has secured $500,000 in seed funding from Novak Biddle Venture Partners.

Last month, another group messaging service named Beluga was acquired by Facebook.

And let’s not forget that Google has a group texting app as well, called Disco.

In other words, this space is heating up fast, and investors are keen to ride the wave. I haven’t yet confirmed the Sequoia financing deal with WhatsApp, I should note, as I’ve been unable to reach them all day, although our sources say the deal is done and has already been communicated to WhatsApp employees.

We’ll update if and when we get confirmation.

Freemium business models are always hard. You have to give users enough for free that they try your service out and get hooked. Then you hit them with fees for upgraded features that make it even better. With a perfect product people don’t mind paying because they feel like it’s good value.

Flickr is a freemium service. But they have more of a hostage taking business model. It may make people cough up the money, but they sure aren’t happy about it. I, for one, have been staring them down for years now. It’s not a fight I think I’ll win, but it’s one that I’m willing to whine loudly about.

On the surface Flickr’s pro service, currently $25/year, seems fair. The free service lets you upload a certain amount of photos, up to a certain maximum size per photo. The pro version allows unlimited uploading and a bigger maximum size per photo.

Reasonable? Absolutely. I originally upgraded to Pro almost immediately after using the service so that I could upload lots of pictures all the time.

But I’m guessing the real reason most people upgrade isn’t to get unlimited uploading. Rather, it’s because Flickr holds your old photos hostage until you pay up.

My Pro account expired at some point, probably because I missed an email or my credit card number changed. I wasn’t using Flickr as much, having moved more to Facebook because of the structured people tagging feature. But then one day I was searching for an old treasured photo that existed only on Flickr and on the hard drive of some long forgotten and discarded mobile phone.

Flickr won’t show me that photo. If your pro account expires only your last 200 photos are shown. The only way I can get access to that photo is by paying the Pro fee.

That is absolutely no way to treat a customer.

And it doesn’t make sense for Flickr. Even though I uploaded those photos as a Pro customer, I can’t see them any more. It’s not that they aren’t just displayed on my public profile, I can’t access them in account settings, either. And even the ones that are displayed are only downloadable in a smaller resized version. Originals are held hostage as well.

Will I pay the Pro fee to get these photos back? No. Although I understand that many people will. But those people will not be happy customers, and they will likely just download their photos at that point and never go back to Flickr again. People certainly shouldn’t get comfortable using Flickr as a repository for their photos over the years, because unless you pay the Pro fee, you’ll lose them forever.

That isn’t what Flickr should want to be. They should want people to feel safe uploading their photos, knowing that they have ultimate control to access and download them in the future.

Flickr has sat on the sidelines as mobile photo apps have come into their own. They aren’t a useful long term repository of your photos. And their business model involves hostage taking. Not exactly what I’d call a thumbs up.

If a photo service wants my business, at the very least they need to promise me the ability to download all my photos in original quality down the road. Because they’re my photos, Yahoo. Not yours.

Photo credit: Flickr/Matthias Weinberger

Wired senior writer Steven Levy has spent the last three years researching In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives, his major new book about the impact of Google on the world. While Levy is generally sympathetic to what he calls the company’s “big hairy audacious goals,” his analysis certainly isn’t uncritical. For example, as he told me earlier this week when he came into our San Francisco studio to talk about In The Plex, Google’s social media strategy has been a “comedy of errors.” And then there’s the looming possibility of a US anti-trust investigation of Google, a scenario that Levy acknowledges isn’t impossible.

That said, In The Plex remains generally bullish – sometimes, perhaps, a little too bullish – on Google’s prospects. And, like the company itself, this is an audaciously bold narrative that goes where no other book about Google has been before. Levy’s new book immediately jumps to the top of the pile in the Google literature. It is essential reading for anyone with any interest in the Mountain View search leviathan.

For Bay Area based TechCrunch readers who would like to hear an extended, live conversation between Levy and myself, please note that he and I will be talking about In The Plex and all things Google from 3.00 to 5.00 pm on Sunday, April 17 at Berkeley’s Hillside Club (2286 Cedar St). Tickets will be $10 at the door and Levy will also be signing copies of In The Plex.

Where are the major tensions within Google?

Google’s social media strategy, “a comedy of errors”

On Android and artificial intelligence

Update: Congrats to Tracey M.W., Jerry C., Ankur A., Taylor O., and Anas B. for winning the 5 free books.

Our first stop for Disrupt is in New York City on May 23rd through May 25th. We will have special speakers and guests, amazing new startups, fun after parties, and much more we will reveal shortly. Want to come with us? Here is another chance to win a free ticket. Congratulations to Eddie Sosa who won last week’s ticket!

If you want a chance at winning this week’s ticket to Disrupt NYC, just follow these steps to enter:

1) Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page:

2) Then do one of the following:

– Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TechCrunch hashtag)
– Leave us a comment below

The contest starts now and ends tomorrow, April 9th at 7:30pm PST.

Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will choose at random and contact the winner this weekend with more details. Anyone in the world is eligible.

Please note this giveaway is for 1 ticket only and does not include airfare or hotel. If you do not win this week be sure to check back next Friday.

Good luck!

Google has just come close to winning approval from the U.S. Justice Department of its $700 million acquisition of travel software company ITA. Google has been embroiled in an investigation by the Justice Department over the search giant’s acquisition of the travel software company, which provides a management system for airfare pricing and shopping services. Despite intense scrutiny and opposition from competitors, the deal appears to be on its way to being approved, if Google complies with the DOJ’s proposed settlement. Read our coverage here for background on the investigation.

This settlement requires that Google develop and license travel software, to establish internal firewall procedures and to continue to fund software research and development in the industry. Interestingly, The DOJ also filed an antitrust lawsuit at the same time they filed a proposed settlement, in case Google doesn’t agree to the settlement terms. But according to this Google blog post, the search giant seems to be ready for the acquisition to close. The key takeaway is that if Google doesn’t settle, the DOJ says that the acquisition, as originally proposed, is anti-competitive.

According to the settlement, Google will be required to continue to license ITA’s airfare search software to airfare websites on commercially “reasonable terms.” Google will also be required to continue to fund for that software at similar levels to what ITA has invested in recent years. Google will also be required to further develop and offer ITA’s next generation InstaSearch product, which is currently in development, to travel websites, which will provide near instantaneous results to certain types of flexible airfare search queries.

Additionally, Google will be have to implement firewall restrictions within the company that prevent unauthorized use of competitively sensitive information and data gathered from ITA’s customers. Basically, they want to create a wall within Google so that one part of the company doesn’t leak information to the other part.

Google is also prohibited from entering into agreements with airlines that would inappropriately restrict the airlines’ right to share seat and booking class information with Google’s competitors. Lastly, the settlement provides for a formal reporting mechanism for complainants if Google breaks any of these terms.

As we’ve written in the past, the ITA deal represents a huge shift in strategy for Google and a substantial new revenue channel for the company. I have a feeling Google will agree to the DOJ’s terms.

UPDATE: Here is ITA’s statement on the news: Today we are extremely pleased with the DOJ’s decision to clear Google’s acquisition of ITA. We will begin work immediately to close the acquisition, and are committed to making the integration process as seamless as possible for our employees and customers. We are excited about joining forces with Google, and look forward to getting our teams together after close to start working on innovative new ways to make travel search easier.

When you name your company Schiit, you’re pretty much asking for a deluge of horrible puns and fourth grade humor (see above and below).

Yet despite its playful moniker — and a truly hilarious FAQ — this small California-based outfit of audio industry veterans is dead serious about designing affordable, audiophile-quality headphone amps. And its latest is a doozy.

As with Schiit’s previous lineup, the solid-state Asgard (tee-hee) and triode tube Valhalla, the Lyr sticks with the company’s Norse naming conventions: Lyr is the name of Menglad’s hall in Jotunheim, the land of the giants. But unlike the previous two offerings, the Lyr is, um, completely insane.

Let us elaborate. This hybrid (tube/MOSFET) headphone amp pushes out a whopping six watts RMS per channel into 32 ohms. If you don’t speak audiophile, that’s about 10 times the power of your average headphone amp and enough to make most ear cans spontaneously combust, should you get ambitious with the volume knob.

So why would anyone need all that power? Schiit’s answer: Why the hell do you need a 400-horsepower engine or bacon-wrapped hot dogs? Valid points, but that extra muscle also translates into near infinite headroom and dynamics that other amps in its price range can’t touch. Put another way, the Lyr makes your great headphones sound even better. A lot better.

As anyone who’s gone from an anemic built-in amp in a computer to something more robust knows, a decent amp can make or break a pair of headphones.

Plug a pair of power-hungry orthodynamics from a company like Audeze or HiFiMan into your iPod and you’ll hear, well, nothing. Plug them into the Lyr and they’ll spring to life with jaw-dropping clarity and detail. Indeed, it’s when this amp is used with difficult-to-drive headphones that it truly shines.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have any orthos on hand, but we did match up the amp with our favorite pair of AGK 702s and a friend’s Sennheiser 650s. The results were stunning in both cases. The Lyr warmed up our cold, calculating 702s, adding a depth of soundstage that was incredibly precise on albums like Massive Attack’s Mezzanine. It showed zero distortion on Kraftwerk’s The Mix and a combination of Herculean power and finesse on tracks like “A/B Machines” from Sleigh Bells’ debut.

Granted, the magic wasn’t all-encompassing: Crappy recordings still sounded crappy. But overall, the Lyr did sonic justice to nearly everything we threw at it.

Still, the new Schiit is definitely not for everyone. If you’re perfectly happy with the buds that came with your iPod, don’t even bother. On the other hand, the Lyr is a no-brainer for anyone who’s recently invested in a decent pair of low-impedance cans, or plans on cozying up to some in the near future.

Yes, you can pay a lot less for a headphone amp, and there are plenty of great ones on the market. But you also drop $450 and never have to worry about driving any headphones again. Ever.

Simply put, the Lyr is exquisite overkill in almost every respect. And paired with a decent DAC, this is one headphone amp even the son of Odin could get behind. Plug in and you will truly feel like you’re in the hall of the mountain king.

WIRED A work of engineering beauty. Exquisite build quality for an amp you’ll hand down to your children. Ships with two JJ ECC88 tubes, but you can mix and match to tune the overall sound signature. Runs amazingly cool (i.e., not scorching hot) given it’s a class-A amp. U.S.A, U.S.A! Like Schiit’s other amps, the Lyr is assembled and made entirely of American components (save for the tubes).

TIRED Look elsewhere for customization: You choose the plug configuration and that’s about it. Near zero portability: Once you park this seven-pound amp on your desk, it’s staying. Do not crank the volume too high: You can easily fry a pair of headphones with this thing. If you have a tube-rolling addiction, get ready for it to get a whole worse.

Photo by Jim Merithew/Wired