Category: Tech news

Apple’s AirPlay is a great technology. It lets you stream music and video wirelessly to Apple products like iPods, iPhones and to the Apple TV. It also can be used to stream to Apple approved hardware like speaker docks, AV receivers and stereo systems. The problem with it, like most Apple technology, if your not on the “Apple approved” list your SOL.

The thought of AirPlay being supported in open source software is unheard of, until now. The Totem media player, which installs by default on most Linux distributions, now has an unofficial plugin that will let you stream media via AirPlay.

Instructions

Clone the git repository

git clone http://git.sukimashita.com/totem-plugin-airplay.git

Move the files you just cloned (make sure you create the appropriate directories if needed)

mv * ~/.local/share/totem/plugins/airplay

That’s it. Start up Totem, enable the plugin and start to enjoy streaming media from any other AirPlay capable device. Now that the open source world has nailed down the AirPlay standard, it shouldn’t be too long before we start to see it supported in things like XBMC or Android.

[Link to Totem AirPlay Plugin]

AirPlay On Linux originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2011/01/22.

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Duke Nukem Forever is probably the best known game that has never been released, as a matter-of-fact, some don’t even think it was ever written.

Duke Nukem Forever was supposed to be a highly anticipated sequel to the 2D classic Duke Nukem, but most people have spent half of their life waiting for the release. Now we finally have a firm release date; May 6th 2010.

How well will a 2D 90′s first person shooter character hold up against the massive games of today? I don’t really know, but having built up 12 years of hype around the release, it’s definitely some big shoes to fill.

Here’s to sneaking a floppy into your workplace to play Duke Nukem on a 386. Now just sit back and wait for the release of Duke Nukem Forever 2

/me ducks

Duke Nukem Forever And Ever originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2011/01/22.

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Those of you who attended the Crunchies last night or watched the live stream were lucky enough to see Jonathan Mann perform a new song that he wrote specifically for the event. “The Crunchies Song” sums up the event pretty nicely. Find both Mann’s live performance and his official video for the song below.

You’ll note that this is actually Mann’s 750th song on YouTube. Yes, he has created a song everyday for over two years now. You might recall some of them, as we’ve posted a number of them — like the one he wrote about me, the one he wrote about Steve Jobs, the one he wrote about the iPhone 4 antenna (which Apple even played at their press conference), the Steven Slater song, and, the one that first put him on our radar, the Bing Jingle (and the follow-up). Mann even wrote a song to congratulate us on the AOL deal.

The abrupt retirement/resignation/deck chair shifting of Google CEO Eric Schmidt couldn’t have been timed better — if you were Facebook. As dissected by the Gillmor Gang, the news of Larry Page’s reascension to the throne seemed just one more shoe dropping in the wake of Steve Ballmer’s axing of Bob Muglia, Steve Jobs’ step back to focus on his health, and other reboots from companies including HP, SAP, and I forget. Actually, mentioning HP and SAP served to bore me into stopping the last sentence.

The one connective tissue is the tectonic shift in technology caused by the iPad, or as @Scobleizer pointed out, the iPhone. Though @DannySullivan and @KevinMarks insisted on extolling the virtues of the free and open Web, there’s no doubt in my mind that Apple’s (and particularly Steve Jobs’) combination of design, control of a hungry niche marketplace, and political savvy adds up to a defining moment that rolls up media, technology, consumers, and the enterprise. And instead of running plays from their own playbooks, Apple’s competitors are working to undermine or dilute the impact of iOS.

Schmidt was not so much a victim of the Apple blitzkrieg as the notion of Google inevitability, or certainly invincibility. No one event or fumble seemed to add up to a reason for the firing, but rather there was the feeling of the absence of a strategy, a game plan, a vision if you must, of how to move beyond the lock on the world’s search market. It felt like the way the pioneers must have felt when they ran out of land at the Pacific Ocean. Cut off from China, shut down by the consumer electronics manufacturers with Google TV, and facing a developer base confused by old style jousting with Apple around H.264 and HTML 5, Brin and Page decided to graduate from middle school.

Whether Brin can nail social any more than he has tried for the last few years, or Page can soften up the media against his DNA, the striking question we had was not whether the Schmidt move was too radical but rather why not do the same thing with Ballmer. As @JTaschek ticked off the definition of what a modern CEO does in the Age of Facebook and Twitter, it occurred to me that both Google and Microsoft should look toward someone who comes from the the Industry Formerly Known as the Media to turn things around. Besides, Ricky Gervais is out of work.

Buoyed by news that early Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin led an $8 million investment in the startup, TechCrunch Disrupt winner and visual search startup Qwiki has hit no.1 on Google Trends ‘Hot Searches’ in the U.S. That’s a pretty impressive feat for a startup that was virtually unknown six months ago. And the company is still in private alpha.

What makes Qwiki so compelling is its ability to generate media on the fly that combines text, audio, and animated photos. It presents information in a highly visual way, assembling photos and spoken text from Wikipedia and other sources to create visual guides to millions of topics. The startup’s technology is no doubt disruptive and could become a completely new way in which we consume information.

Qwiki is planning to launch an iPad app, which is in the works.

Below is a video of Qwiki’s first demo at Disrupt.

Last night at the Crunchies, Yuri Milner of Digital Sky Technologies won the VC of the Year award (Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures was a close runner-up). Milner has almost single-handedly created a new class of mezzanine venture capital, allowing companies like Facebook, Groupon, and Zynga to postpone IPOs while still getting a ton of liquidity and huge valuations.

Before he could leave the stage after accepting his award last night, Michael tried to ambush interview him. Milner deadpanned his way through the every question, and the result was pretty entertaining (see video above). Arrington asked why his investment philosophy is working out so well, noting that Milner invests at what many people at the time think are absurd valuations.

“Because of absurd valuations,” replied Milner.

Arrington: “Has that ever not worked out for you?”

Milner quipped: “We’ve only made three investments: Facebook, Groupon, and Zynga.”

Arrington: “What happened with Twitter?” (a deal DST wasn’t able to get in on).

Milner: “Nothing happened.”

This is truly some bulletproof storage, amirite? Today we’re giving away the ioSafe Rugged Portable hard drive, a warranted drive that can withstand a shotgun blast, salt fog, and all kinds of other crazy stuff. The drive, which is shipping at the end of the month, costs $149 but can be yours for the low, low price of one comment.

Read more…

Sony has just announced that Qriocity, the strangely named cloud-based digital music service it aims to rival Apple’s iTunes with, is now immediately available in France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

The service, which is apparently called “Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity” in full, made its debut in the UK and Ireland in December 2010, and provides users with access to a catalogue of millions of songs from labels like – surprise – Sony Music, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and EMI Music as well as several independent labels and publishers.

Back in April 2009, I wrote about a site called ClusterShot, which aimed to rival Getty Images-owned stock photography juggernaut iStockphoto. Almost two years later, the company’s calling it quits – unless a reasonable buyer steps forward with a reasonable offer.

Ironically enough, last I’d heard about ClusterShot was when they reportedly reached profitability less than a year after launching.

In a blog post published last night, CEO Dan James explains:

A little over two years ago we launched ClusterShot. We very openly called it an experiment. It was not only a technical experiment but an experiment for our company’s cultural and economic models. The experiment is coming to an end.

We, silverorange, have decided to shut ClusterShot down. This may not be a surprise to some of you; as you may have noticed, our zeal for the site quickly disappeared this summer. There are many reasons for this but the overarching theme is simply: it wasn’t quite successful enough.

ClusterShot has immediately suspended pro-account sign ups, photo uploading and new account creations, and will be refunding people who’ve already paid for the premium service in full, if they’ve signed up for a pro account within the last 2 months.

James also says there’s a 0% commission on all photos sold until the site is shut down, which is scheduled to happen on February 21.

Unless of course, a party comes forward with an offer to buy it:

If you really, really want to save ClusterShot then please make us an offer. We are open to selling the entire site, brand, and system to someone who wants to take it to the next level1. No reasonable offer by a reasonable party will be refused.

There is a lot of technical investment in ClusterShot by one of the better web development firms out there. We have spent over two years working on ClusterShot and have done what we think are some pretty cool things with it.

ClusterShot was one of the ventures of Canadian web development company silverorange, which counts Digg’s creative director and co-founder of Pownce Daniel Burka among its co-founders and partners.

It’s now going in the TechCrunch deadpool, until further notice.

(Thanks to Ferdinand J. Reinke for the tip)

Here we are. Apple has just announced on this promotion page that there have been 10 billion downloads from its App Store since its inception.

It’s a huge milestone in the life of the App Store, which lets people downloads games and software programs for their iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads (lots of those out there).

Apple says it will soon announce who downloaded the 10 billionth app (or submitted a free entry form at the right time) – he or she will win a US $10,000 iTunes Gift Card.

Also check out: In The Race To 10 Billion Downloads, Apple Uncovers The Top All-Time Apps and Mobile App Market Will Be Worth $25 Billion By 2015 – Apple’s Share: 20%

(Thanks to everyone who sent this in)

Facebook just raised $1.5 billion at a $50 billion valuation, having secured just south of $2.4 billion since the company was founded.

Contrast that with The Appleseed Project, which aims to establish an open source, fully distributed and decentralized social networking software suite to rival Facebook.

I just got an email from the project’s lead developer, Michael Chisari, prompting me to participate in their crowd-sourced fundraising efforts. So far, they’ve raised about $2,200 in 7 days, so they’re roughly $7,800 short of their $10,000 fundraising goal.

Another project that revolves around building an open source alternative to Facebook, Diaspora, managed to raise $200,000 from some 6,500 backers through Kickstarter.

So why is The Appleseed Project struggling to drum up enough interest to get to $10,000 more rapidly? Is it the choice of the crowdfunding platform (IndieGoGo vd. Kickstarter)?

Are they just really bad at marketing? Is there simply too much choice in ‘web decentralization’ open source projects, causing confusion as to what is more relevant, and which project is in a more advanced stage than the other? Or does it all come down to, simply, bad luck?

For your information: Appleseed, a 100% volunteer project, was started in 2004, while Diaspora was only kicked off around April 2010, so they’re certainly much further ahead of Diaspora in terms of development.

They’re certainly still hopeful:

We’ve released a new version of the Appleseed social networking software, version 0.7.9. If you’re running an Appleseed node, it’s highly recommended that you upgrade, as this release adds significant new features. If you’re a beta tester, you’ve already seen the new features (posting links, journals, nested comments, and more).

Progress continues onward with Appleseed, and we’re proud to be a part of such an ambitious project. The future is looking bright, and in the next few months, we’ll be rounding out all the base features, and then moving into building out the tools that developers can use to extend the software, with mobile apps and more.

We’ll also be working on documentation and refactoring the code in preparation for a 1.0 release sometime in 2011.

My question is: if it indeed took Appleseed from 2004 to this day to get to a point where they still need to raise funds to reach stable 1.0 release, wasn’t the project a little over-ambitious? Is its future really that bright? As always, time will tell.

This evening at the Crunchies, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason took home the coveted CEO of the Year award. But we couldn’t let him leave the stage without taking the opportunity to ask him a few questions about the red-hot company.

Our own Michael Arrington kicked things off by asking about Groupon’s press release for its recent funding round, when it “Raised, Like, A Billion Dollars“. Groupon and Mason have long had a very amusing and irreverent sense of humor. But how long can they keep that up before it causes a deal to fall through, or something else undesirable to happen?

Mason replied that he’s taking the Arnold Schwarzenegger approach to leadership. That is, he’s taking the first part of his career and doing everything stupid he can think of, so people have no expectations for him down the line (then again, he did just win CEO of the Year, so he’s not setting the bar too low).

Michael followed up by asking if Groupon had selected Morgan Stanley to lead the company’s IPO. Mason responded, “We are talking to bankers about the possibility of going public…. We have not made any decisions about whether to go public or who to do it with”.

Finally, Michael asked about Groupon’s revenue — could it do $4 billion this year?  To which Mason responded, “Which one’s the revenue?”

This year’s fourth annual Crunchies Awards have just concluded, and we’re happy to say that it was an overwhelming success. For those who weren’t at the event or watching our livestream, we’ve included the list of nominees and winners below. Our most sincere congratulations to the winners and to all of the nominees as well. It was an incredibly tight race for many of the categories, and it’s safe to say that everyone on this list is at the top of their field.

We’d like to take a moment to point out Twitter’s win for “Best Overall Startup Or Product”, the first time the company has won a Crunchie in this category. Twitter has become an indispensable part of social communication and a key ingredient in the fabric of the web. And congratulations to Groupon’s Andrew Mason, who won for CEO of the Year; Mark Pincus, who took Best Founder of the Year, and Quora, which took Best New Startup in 2010.

Best Internet Application
Chartbeat
Greplin
Pandora (winner)
Rdio (runnerup)
Ujam

Best Social App
Cityville
Dailybooth (winner)
Foursquare
GroupMe
Twitter (runnerup)

Best Social Commerce App
Blippy
Groupon (winner)
Jetsetter
LivingSocial
One Kings Lane
ShopKick (runnerup)

Best Mobile App
Bump
Chomp
Google Mobile Maps for Android (winner)
Hashable
Instagram (runnerup)

Best Location Based Service
Facebook Places (runnerup)
Foursquare (winner)
Gowalla
SimpleGeo
Uber

Best New Device
Boxee Box
Google Chrome Notebook
iPad (winner)
iPhone 4
Kno
Xbox Kinect (runnerup)

Best Technology Achievement
Blekko
Google Self-driving Cars (winner)
Hunch
Palantir
Qwiki (runnerup)
Word Lens

Best Design
1000memories
about.me (runnerup)
Airbnb
Flipboard
Gogobot (winner)
Qwiki

Best Touch Interface
Flipboard (winner)
Fotopedia Heritage iPad app (runnerup)
Osmos
Pulse News Reader
Sencha Touch
Swype

Best Bootstrapped Startup
Addmired (iMob) (winner)
Beluga
Easel
Fast Society
Instapaper (runnerup)
Techmeme

Best Enterprise
37 Signals
Buddy Media (winner)
CloudApp
inDinero
Millennial Media (runnerup)
Salesforce

Best International
Crivo
PCH International
Soluto (runnerup)
ViKi (winner)
VNL
Wonga

Best Clean Tech
Coolerado
Kopernik (runnerup)
MicroGreen
Puralytics
Smith Electric Vehicles
SolarCity (winner)

Best Time Sink Application
Angry Birds (runnerup)
Cityville (winner)
Netflix streaming
Quora
StumbleUpon

Angel of the Year
Jeff Clavier, SoftTech VC
Ron Conway, SV Angel (runnerup)
Michael Dearing, Harrison Metal Capital
Chris Dixon, Founder Collective
Mike Maples, FLOODGATE
Paul Graham, Y Combinator (winner)

VC of the Year (individual)
Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz
Roelof Botha, Sequoia Capital
Jim Breyer, Accel Partners
John Doerr, Kleiner Perkins
Yuri Milner, DST (winner)
Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures (runnerup)

Founder of the Year
Julian Assange, WikiLeaks
Dennis Crowley, Foursquare
Jack Dorsey, Square (runnerup)
Kevin and Julia Hartz, Eventbrite
David Karp, Tumblr
Mark Pincus, Zynga (winner)

CEO of the Year
Dick Costolo, Twitter
Reed Hastings, Netflix
Drew Houston, Dropbox
Andrew Mason, Groupon (winner)
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook (runnerup)

Best New Startup or Product of 2010
Flipboard
GroupMe
Instagram
Quora (winner)
Square (runnerup)
Uber

Best Overall Startup or Product of 2010
Facebook
Groupon (runnerup)
Quora
Twitter (winner)
Zynga

And a special thanks to our sponsors, including Tagged, Microsoft, MailChimp, SecondMarket, Red Bull and Ustream.

We’ve given one away before, and we are doing it again.

Earlier in the month we asked our Facebook fans a question we were curious about. We asked, “Choosing from all of the cool gadgets we write about, if you had the chance to win one, which one would you want?” We had hundreds of fans chime in and the number one thing people wanted was an Apple iPad. We thought since Apple had such a tremendous quarter, an iPad is the number one thing our fans want, and the iPad just won a 2010 Crunchies Award for Best Device, why not give one away?

We will be giving an iPad to one lucky reader at random. At a retail value of $499, this is one giveaway you surely don’t want to miss.

If you want a chance at getting your hands on an iPad, just follow these steps to enter.

Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page:

Then do one of the following:

– Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TechCrunch hashtag)
– Or leave us a comment below explaining why this iPad has to be yours

The contest starts right now and ends tomorrow, January 22nd at 7:30pm PST.

Like previous giveaways, 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, as long as you can receive delivered packages. We’ll also throw in some TechCrunch swag for fun.

Tonight at our Crunchies Awards in San Francisco, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo took the stage with our own Michael Arrington. The topic of discussion? Well, it was sort of all over the place — more of a fun conversation.

Mike asked Costolo what he thought about the recent news that Eric Schmidt was being replaced as CEO of Google by co-founder Larry Page. You’d think Costolo would have some insight about the news simply because he himself just took over as CEO of Twitter, replacing Ev Williams, a co-founder (who also stayed with the company).

“Eric is on a bit different of a plane than me. I mean in the Gulfstream sense, not the other sense,” Costolo joked. “I think he’ll be fine,” he continued to laughs. “I think it’s going to work out for him.”

Mike quickly pivoted. “So far Twitter has been too cool for revenue. Is this the year there might be revenue?,” he asked. “There must and shall be revenue,” Costolo said with a laugh. He quickly corrected himself — “There already is revenue. There will be more revenue,” he said. “The next year, more still!,” he joked.

“We are focused on it,” Costolo continued saying that they have many products built for that purpose now. “That’s not one of the things I worry about,” he continued.

Naturally, Mike followed up with “So what do you worry about?” “International growth,” Costolo quickly replied. “You have to scale lanuages, regional support, data centers. Organizing all of that is a challenge,” he continued. “And not many [companies] have had to do that before,” Costolo said noting that it’s not like there’s a book on how do it.

Costolo also said that he was a Twitter user before all “the cool kids” signed up at SXSW in 2007. When Mike asked if Costolo knew then that this would be a good company, Costolo admitted that he did not. “I didn’t really get it.” That said, he still angel invested in it.

“Do you get it now?,” Mike quipped. Costolo laughed. “It continues to evolve.”

You can continue to watch the show live here.