Category: Tech news

If you haven’t yet checked out Prezi, one of the most innovative presentation tools I’ve ever seen, you’re totally missing out. Today, the young company behind the amazing product is (finally) launching the highly-anticipated Prezi for iPad (iTunes link), enabling users to show stunning live presentations straight from the tablet computer.

Right off the bat: we all know the iPad doesn’t support Flash, so not all existing presentations can be viewed in full if they contain Flash material such as videos. Apart from that, all presentations that were made in the past should be flawlessly viewable on the iPad.

More details are available in Prezi’s blog post about the release.

As you can tell from the video below, Prezi for iPad is a great way to show someone a presentation on a touch-screen device, and the typical Prezi style fits hand gesturing (pinching, flipping, panning) on the iPad perfectly. At launch, it isn’t possible to effectively create and edit presentations from the app, but I’m told that this will likely be coming later.

Prezi has many organizations using its product, from the World Economic Forum to Stanford University and at companies such as Facebook, IBM and Google. The startup has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from TED Conferences and Sunstone Capital, and counts Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey among its advisors.

The company, which has offices in Budapest, Hungary and San Francisco, has attracted over 1.85 million registered users since its launch in April 2009. The company boasts users from 220 countries, but the United States is the biggest market for them, followed by Europe and Asia.

Over the past several months, there’s been a shift happening in the Bay Area. Whereas a lot of startups used to be centrally located in actual Silicon Valley, near the tech giants, Stanford, and the venture capitalists, they’re increasingly moving north, to the city of San Francisco. (Technically, TechCrunch was one of those startups, we moved to the city in June from Palo Alto.) So it should be no surprise that a number of incubators are popping up in the city. But Founders Den, which is opening its doors today, is attempting to be a bit different.

Founders Den isn’t actually an incubator at all. Instead, it’s a shared office/club for entrepreneurs — all types of entrepreneurs, from experienced ones who have sold companies, to those just starting out. The idea is for them to all come together in this new, large 8,500 square foot space in the SoMa area of San Francisco. We got a chance to tour the place last week — it’s very, very nice (check out the video below).

But it’s a private club. You have to be invited to join. The idea there is so it’s a comfortable environment for all those who are there.

So who is there?

Well the Founders Den is the brainchild of four entrepreneurs: Jason Johnson, Jonathan Abrams, Michael Levit, and Zachary Bogue. Given the amount of experience between the four (and they’re all working on new startups themselves), they were able to pull together an impressive list of advisors who will also regularly be in the Den. These include people like Drew Houston, Elad Gil, Ethan Beard, Gil Penchina, James Hong, Jay Adelson, Justin Kan, Keith Rabois, Michael Birch, Michael Marquez, Philip Kaplan, Rick Marini, Rusty Rueff, Shervin Pishevar, and Tim Ferriss.

This is the perfect spot for a joke about the Founders Den having more Angels than Heaven.

The Den will also feature four initial sponsors: DLA Piper, Norwest Venture Partners, SecondMarket, and Turnstone/Steelcase. Each of these companies are free to come and go from the Den as they please as well. The money they contribute to the Den will go towards paying the rent and putting on events.

But the key to the Founders Den may the actual startups that are able to get inside. Already, there are ten such pre-launch startups that have moved in and are working in the space:

• Bionic Panda
• DotCloud
• Inporia
• iSpeech
• JungleCents
• OpenAppMkt
• ProximityWare
• Rethink Books
• Revel Systems
• Spigot

Each came by way of referral from the network of the individuals listed above. That’s how you get in: referral. There’s no strict application process — someone with clout in the Founders Den just has to vouch for you.

And if you get in, you’ll have about 6 months to work on your startup while paying a low rent and getting access to all the amenities: the space, the people, and the events. Typically, startups working out of the Founders Den will be post-seed funding but working on raising their first proper round. And while there is no formal funding policy, with that many angels regularly hanging around, you can bet there will be a lot of action going on.

Learn more in our video below.

Jules: “Well you know the 3D HD channels on TV?”
Vincent Vega: “I don’t watch TV.”
Jules: “Well, the way they make the Penthouse 3D HD channels is, they make one show with a dual-lensed camera. That show’s called a 3D porno. Then they show that show to the people who make 3D pornos, and on the strength of that one 3D porno they decide if they’re going to make more 3D porno. Some 3D pornos get picked and become 3D television pornos. Some don’t, become nothing.”

PR after the jump.

Three weeks ago, Foursquare updated its iPhone app to include the ability to upload photos with check-ins. Around that time Foursquare competitor Gowalla hit the one million milestone after nine months of including a photo uploading feature. It looks like it has taken Foursquare less than one month to reach that milestone, according to a Tweet sent out by the company this morning.

Foursquare hit one million photos over the weekend but it’s unclear who posted the one millionth photo. The fact that the startup hit the milestone so quickly is not surprising, considering that Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley said in late December that the network was approaching one photo uploaded per second. One factor that has contributed to this traction is that Foursquare launched their photo functionality with a number of popular partners including Instagram, PicPlz, and Foodspotting. The photo uploading functionality was also added to its Android app.

To put this number in perspective, Flickr recently hit 5 billion photos and are seeing 3,000 images uploaded every minute.

UPDATE: Foursquare’s millionth photo came from a user Paris, France.

Khush, a startup that develops music applications, has raised a new round of funding from Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, angel investor Yee Lee, and Georgia Tech ATDC VentureLab. The startup declined to reveal how much money was raised in the round.

Co-founded by Prerna Gupta (you can read her recent TechCrunch guest post here), Khush develops an artificial intelligence technology that helps people make music. The company’s first product LaDiDa, which costs $2.99 on the App Store, is essentially a “reverse karaoke” iOS app. Similar to TechCrunch Disruprt finalist Ujam, LaDiDa allows users to sing a song and then will remix the users’s voice, add beats, and background music to create a professional sounding track.

LaDiDa’s demonstration videos have received over 65 million views on YouTube, and the app has been in the Top 10 Paid Music Apps list in iTunes since May 2010. Over 5 million songs have been created in less than one year on the App Store and LaDiDa has been downloaded 270,000 times since last May. And Gupta says that the company is now profitable.

Gupta says that LaDiDa is hoping to differentiate itself as more of an entertainment product as opposed to a music production software. And the app’s key userbase is focused on the 13-17 year old market. Gupta adds that the funding will be used towards product development, with the startup planning to launch new apps in the next few months.

We’re all back at home this morning and I’ve been mulling over best of show all weekend. While we could take our love of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Minis to its obvious conclusion, considering that the candies eventually and inevitably turn into a sloppy mess when you hold them in your hand too long, we decided against it. Instead, we’ve chosen the unique and decidedly game-changing Motorola Atrix.

First, let me state that it was slim pickings out there. The show was, at best, a placeholder. Many of the major company events were actual snores (if you watched our live stream, you’d have seen that LG whipped out a fridge and washer combo and talked about Six Sigma for a bit, always a crowd-pleaser) and the only exciting event was the Motorola launch of the Xoom Honeycomb tablet and an odd phone that shouldn’t have captured our imaginations but definitely did: the Atrix.

Read more…

I can’t begin to count the amount of iPhone chargers I have. Multiple ones from Apple, knock off units I bought because I left them at home, I even have an awesome unit from iGo that can charge two USB devices from it’s internal battery. But I bet that none of them are as green or as cool as this unit.

The Visible Green Charger will reduce standby power by up to 85% when your iOS device is not in use. The awesome electroluminescent cord will light up and flow quickly to indicate that your iOS device is charged up to 65% and will slow down as the device’s battery starts to fill up.

The Visable Green Charger will retail for $40 when it hits store shelves later this month. Currently the device only supports iOS devices but the company behind the unit, Dexim, hopes to expand it to other gadgets that can take a charge through USB.

[Link to Visable Green Charger]

Electroluminescent iOS Charger originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2011/01/10.

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We have showed you in the past how you can build your own MAME arcade cabinet, but if you are lacking space for a monster arcade machine this mini MAME cabinet would be perfect for you.

Modder Ed had an old netbook lying around and decided to slap this together as a Christmas gift for some family members. Using an Asus eeepc 901, some Happ Controls buttons and a joystick, and an iPac 2 Player controller Ed drafted up some plans and started cutting.

The mini cab runs Maximus Arcade which an awesome front-end for multiple game emulators, not just MAME. It makes running a cab a snap; it installs on Windows and does everything for you including auto starting and hiding the Windows interface.

Check out the video of the mini MAME cabinet in action. I don’t have the space for a full size cab in my house with all the kids toys but I defiantly have space for this.

DIY: Mini MAME Cabinet originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2011/01/09.

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Apple has removed the video player VLC from it’s App Store, so if you don’t already have it installed on your iPad or iPhone you’re out of luck.

Before you decided to send hate mail to Steve Jobs, you should know that Apple didn’t want to remove it. Rather, it’s a result of a single man’s crusade who coincidentally works for Apple’s competitor, Nokia.

Rémi Denis-Courmont (who is a lead contributor to the VLC project) launched a one man campaigned based on Apple adding DRM to their applications and thus violating the GPL’ed code VLC is released under. It’s important to know that Rémi acted alone and that VideoLAN, the group that’s responsible for the desktop version of VLC, had nothing to do with having Applidium’s VLC port for iOS removed. As as lead developer, Rémi was within the legal right to pursue the removal himself.

Denis-Courmont’s response to the removal of VLC from the App Store comes across quite snarky.

“At last, Apple has removed VLC media player from its application store. Thus the incompatibility between the GNU General Public License and the AppStore terms of use is resolved – the hard way. This end should not have come to a surprise to anyone, given the precedents.”

Thanks a lot for sticking to your principles, it sure out-weighs all the people who could have enjoyed the FREE app on their iPhone or iPad. Well done

Apple Removes VLC From App Store originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2011/01/08.

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I’ve tried really hard to stay away from all the CES stuff that has been flying around the inter-webs but this story about Mattel cramming a camera into one of their 1:64 scale Hot Wheels car was too good to pass up.

The idea is for people to get a first person view of what it would be like if you could ride inside a Hot Wheels car. Each car comes with enough memory to capture 12 minutes of VGA video that can be downloaded to your computer via USB or viewed on the tiny screen located on the underside of each car. With such limited memory using this as a spy camera is out of the question, unless something happens really quickly.

They should be available this fall for about $60. I’m sure the novelty of using it to record video will wear off quickly, leaving you with a very expensive small metal car.

[Link via Oh Gizmo!]

Video Camera Hot Wheels Car originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2011/01/08.

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Micro Four Thirds cameras sit comfortably in their own little niche, both in price and performance, between high-end point-and-shoots and beginner-level digital SLRs. They boast interchangeable lenses, large sensors and retro-cool styling, so they appeal to people who are serious about photography and can wax poetic about the compact lines of a vintage Leica.

They are also a great stepping stone for the point-and-shoot person who wants to become a better photographer. And their small form factors make them an excellent antidote for the SLR owner suffering from “heavy camera bag” syndrome.

The new E-PL2 joins the growing family of other Micro Four Thirds models from Olympus. It has a svelte metal-composite body, gorgeous high-resolution 3-inch LCD viewfinder and enhanced low-light performance. It’s a welcome upgrade to the E-PL1 and viable alternative the more expensive E-P2.

This fourth-generation Olympus Pen sports a 12.1-megapixel Live MOS sensor, which is roughly eight times larger than the sensor in your average point-and-shoot camera. The larger sensor provides better image quality and low-light performance, similar to that of a digital SLR.

The E-PL2 also pumps up the ISO to 6400, making it great for night photography. The fastest shutter speed has also been increased to 1/4000th of a second to help you freeze action and use fast lenses in bright light.

Other internal updates include eye-detection for more accurate focusing of portrait shots, a live-guide feature for viewing effects in real time, and an updated suite of artistic filters — in-camera effects that give your pictures that Lomo warmth, or an old-timey, grainy black-and-white vibe.

The live guide is intended to show you how altering the camera’s settings can change the picture, and it’s meant for those first learning photography. Unfortunately, it hides what is actually being changed. For example, it shows a slider to “change background focus” instead of explaining how f-stops work. The artistic filters are fun, but the plethora of desktop and online applications available to spruce up your images make them somewhat redundant.

The E-PL2 ships with a new M. Zuiko 14-42mm f3.5/5.6 zoom lens (28-84mm equivalent) that works during movie or still shooting and has a very snappy response time. The lens collapses for storage but must be extended to roughly double its stored size when in use.

The results from the supplied lens were better than expected for a kit lens. The beauty of the Micro Four Thirds standard is the wide variety of adapters, which allow other manufacturers’ lenses to be used. The Pen’s body is just screaming to be mated with a classic manual-focus Leica or Voitlanger lens. Old manual lenses still benefit from E-PL2’s image stabilization, which is internal and sensor-based.

One very welcome new feature is the redesigned case. The grip is more comfortable, and the E-PL2 feels solid in hand. Holding it evokes a feeling of nostalgia for a classic rangefinder film camera with its pleasant heft and balance. The front half of the camera and the lens mount are both constructed of metal, the body is cast and the mount is machined. The rear case material is a hard plastic, but it’s nearly indistinguishable from the metal of the front. It feels like a high-quality, professional camera.

With CES going on this week and the tech media flooding the blog-o-sphere with reports of new gadgets and technology I thought I’d brake the mundane stream of press releases and “first looks” at gadgets that might never make it to market.

Here are 10 really weird USB drives that are sure to make you laugh.

The sperm drive. When you pull this out of your pocket you are going to have people wondering exactly what you were doing with your hand in your pocket in the first place.

The typical food item converted to a USB drive. Just don’t try to eat it, no matter how much wasabi you add to it.

I guess this is where the name “Thumb Drive” originally came from. Kinda creepy actually.

For those that just can’t let go of old technology. I just hope this USB drive has a greater storage capacity than it’s case did.

The clothes pin drive is creative and different, plus it’s great for hanging your shirts up to dry.

Maybe when you pull the sperm drive out of your pocket you can pull this poop drive out of the other one. That should really get the conversation going.

It’s the old “Teddy Bear jammed it’s head into the USB port” trick. You can’t fool me!

Probably one of the weirdest ones on the list. Not sure why would would want a spoonful of cereal to have a USB drive attached, but then again this is the Internet.

The eraser drive is perfect for fixing mistakes, just don’t try to run out your red underlines in MS Word.

This humping dog drive is sure to get the ladies. Plug it in and it actually starts to hump the side of your computer.

10 Weird USB Drives originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2011/01/06.

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In our next installment of Distros That Don’t Suck we will be looking at open source HTPC software. Sure you can load up VLC or even use Windows Media player, but having a dedicated solution with a UI that is made for a TV is a lot easier and pleasing. I’ve left the PVR-centric software like MythTV and Freevo off the list since their main purpose is to act as a PVR. I’ll be reviewing open source PVR software by itself at a later date.

XBMC – The Xbox Media Center Project started as homebrew software for the original Xbox gaming system and has since been ported to Linux, Windows, OSX, AppleTV and even as a standalone Linux based LiveCD/LiveUSB image. It offers a clean UI, intuitive interface and can play just about anything you throw at it. It offers a plugin system with a huge repository of community plugins to enhance the experience. It’s real easy to setup and it’s configuration is portable across operating systems. If you have an old Xbox laying around this makes a great HTPC that is powerful and best of all cheap.

MediaPortal – This is a Windows based HTPC software so technically it’s not 100% open source since it requires Windows and doesn’t offer a Linux port. If offers everything you would expect in HTPC software; Video streaming, DVD playback, Internet Radio, Picture Gallery and it’s own plugin system. You will need a compatible TV Tuner card to enjoy PVR features and to watch TV but it’s not needed to run the software. If you are a Windows fan and are looking for an alternate to Windows Media Center this is as close as you can get without the cost.

Element – Element is an open source HTPC system that comes pre-loaded with XBMC and the ability to play back just about any media locally or over the Internet. Element also has it’s own framework for offering add-on modules that allow you to play content from services like Hulu, Cooliris, Boxee, Clicker, Amazon on Demand and Youtube. They have adapted the UI’s of popular open source software like Firefox and Pidgin so that it fits the TV experience better than their native desktop versions. They also offer an Android app that allows you to use your Android phone as a remote control; definitely a neat idea for the times you can’t find the remote anywhere.

GeeXboX – A Gentoo based fully functional media center that can be run from LiveCD, LiveUSB, or be installed on a hard drive. GeeXbox is a very lean distro that doesn’t require a lot of processing power so it’s perfect for older hardware. It uses Enna as it’s primary media center application to play your music, videos or look at your pictures. This is the perfect distro for the no-frills experience when you just want to play your media and aren’t looking for any additional functionality.

Open Source HTPC’s That Don’t Suck originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2011/01/06.

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Last week we reported that Groupon was closing a massive $950 million funding round at an impressive $4.75 billion valuation in the wake of walking away from an acquisition offer from Google.

Groupon already closed half of that — around $500 million — from Russian firm DST, Fidelity and Morgan Stanley. Now we’ve heard from multiple sources that distinguished Silicon Valley firm Kleiner Perkins is on the verge of participating in the round as well. It’s unclear when the remainder of the round will close or who the other other participants aside from Kleiner will be.

Kleiner has recently been making aggressive moves in Silicon Valley, including a $150 million slice of Twitter’s recent $200 million funding round, doubling down on its iFund earlier this year, and its $250 million bet on social, the sFund.

Another year, another set of Kevin Rose predictions, this time about the iPad 2. Apparently Rose has revealed to the subscribers of his foundat.io/n newsletter (and everyone else) that the iPad 2 announcement will be coming in 3-4 weeks, giving the exact date of February 1st as a possibilty. So basically last year’s iPad announcement date, plus a year.

From the Blogg:

From: Kevin Rose (Foundation Newsletter)

I have it on good authority that Apple will be announcing the iPad 2 in the next “3-4 weeks”, possibly Tuesday February 1st. The iPad 2 will feature a retina display and front/back cameras.

If you’re thinking of buying an iPad, hold off for now.

Kevin

UPDATE: Spoke w/another source, the display has a “higher dpi”, but not technically a retina display. This seems odd to me, we’ll have to wait and see..

Briefly mentioned is a retina display and front/back cameras. The retina display tip seems to be the most controversial (Rose has amended it with a second update suggesting a higher dpi but not retina) and some people are saying it’s impossible. From the comments:

“No. No Retina. It’s just not feasible. Let’s look at the math.

iPhone 2G/3G/3GS is a 3,5″ screen with a 320×480 resolution. You get 164.83 PPI out of this screen.
iPhone 4 is a 3,5″ screen with a 640×960 resolution. You get 329.65 PPI out of this screen.
> iPhone 4 has a PPI over 300, which Steve Jobs himself said to be more pixels per inch than the human eye can pick out, thus it’s a Retina Display. Now to the iPad(s).

iPad has a 9,7″ screen with a 1024×768 resolution. You get 131.96 PPI out of this screen.
What about if the mythical Retina iPad was released? What if it had the same screensize as the iPad and the same PPI as iPhone 4? It would need to have a 2560×1920 resolution to be able to reach 329.9 PPI, about the same as iPhone 4. Feasible? No.”

Kevin Rose occasionally predicts things, like this and this and this. Clock is ticking on this one, in the meantime sign up for his newsletter!

Image: revision3