TC50: Clicker is a TV guide for the Internet age

TC50: Clicker is a TV guide for the Internet age

Clicker, a startup launching at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco today, says one of the problems with watching TV online is figuring out what’s on: Where’s our TV guide for the web? Clicker says it’s the first “structured, comprehensive and unbiased guide for online… Continue Reading

TC50: Spawn Labs lets you play your console games on your laptop

TC50: Spawn Labs lets you play your console games on your laptop

We’ve seen more and more energy in the social and mobile games market, but if you’re looking for high-end games, you’ll still find them on consoles like the Xbox 360, mostly. A startup called Spawn Labs, which just debuted at the TechCrunch50 conference in San… Continue Reading

TC50: Toybots helps toys come to life with Internet connectivity

TC50: Toybots helps toys come to life with Internet connectivity

Toybots Woozees, which launched at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco today, is a platform toy makers can use to build Internet connectivity and GPS tracking into their products. For example, an enabled teddy bear can use a built-in accelerometer to tell when you give… Continue Reading

TC50: FluidHtml builds a more web-friendly version of Flash

TC50: FluidHtml builds a more web-friendly version of Flash

Adobe’s Flash is a popular format for web developers because it allows companies to build pretty, interactive web apps, but it also comes with plenty of headaches. A startup called FluidHtml, launching at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco today, announced a new web markup… Continue Reading

TC50: iTwin allows encrypted, cableless file-sharing

TC50: iTwin allows encrypted, cableless file-sharing

iTwin, one of the startups launching at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco today, is a hardware product that wirelessly allows two computers to share encrypted data from anywhere in the world. The founders call it a “cableless cable” because it connects two computers, without… Continue Reading

TC50: Microsoft’s next attack on Google: Bing gets visual search

TC50: Microsoft’s next attack on Google: Bing gets visual search

Microsoft continues its attempt to unseat Google as the king of search. Today, someone from the team behind its Bing search engine took the stage at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco to announce the latest feature: Visual search.

The most obvious way to use visual… Continue Reading

TC50: Sealtale offers a personalized way to declare brand loyalty

TC50: Sealtale offers a personalized way to declare brand loyalty

The latest company to demo at today’s TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco is Sealtale. There are people who love to tell everyone about the companies, products, and brands that they like. They’ll put stickers on laptops, pins on messengers bags, and so on. Sealtale brings… Continue Reading

TC50: ClaseMovil launches a virtual world for learning

TC50: ClaseMovil launches a virtual world for learning

ClaseMovil just demonstrated its new virtual world for education at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco. The company is launching in Latin America and is pitching itself as a way for underprivileged students to stay competitive.

The ClaseMovil virtual world is presented as a place for… Continue Reading

TC50: Story Something creates personal stories for your children

TC50: Story Something creates personal stories for your children

Story Something, one of the TechCrunch50 companies kept under wraps until today’s live event in San Francisco (click here for a live stream from the show), lets you create a personalized story for your child that they can take with them anywhere.

The founding team says… Continue Reading

TC50: With Penn & Teller, your iPhone does card tricks too

TC50: With Penn & Teller, your iPhone does card tricks too

Magicians Penn & Teller are launching an iPhone application at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco today. It’s a way for iPhone users to perform card tricks and, in the process, convince everyone that they’re friends with the famous illusionists.

Basically, you have your friend pick… Continue Reading

Dean’s picks for the best of DEMO

Dean’s picks for the best of DEMO

The DEMO 2009 conference was in a familiar setting in Palm Desert, Calif., this week, but it was very different from past shows. The elephant in the room, as organizer Chris Shipley pointed out, was the weak economy.

That colored everything. There were fewer companies —… Continue Reading

DEMO: AppZero makes it easy to hop between clouds

DEMO: AppZero makes it easy to hop between clouds

Cloud computing offers a lot of advantages to companies that don’t want to run their own data centers. AppZero, one of the companies presenting this week at DEMO 2009, hopes to make it much easier for companies to move their sites and applications between different… Continue Reading

DEMO: Primal Fusion connects your thoughts together

DEMO: Primal Fusion connects your thoughts together

Primal Fusion is using semantic technology to help you with “thought networking.” What that means, apparently, is that it helps you gather relevant materials from across the internet in order to put together a term paper or research project.

The company is showing its offering at… Continue Reading

DEMO: Promptu launches ShoutOUT iPhone voice-driven messaging/command system

DEMO: Promptu launches ShoutOUT iPhone voice-driven messaging/command system

The DEMO conference is never a kind forum for those trying to do voice recognition applications. That proved true again just now as Scott Maddux, vice president of product marketing at Promptu, tried to do a voice-command product demo at the show.

Menlo Park, Calif.-based Promptu… Continue Reading

DEMO: SmartyCard lets kids learn stuff and earn stuff

DEMO: SmartyCard lets kids learn stuff and earn stuff

SmartyCard has a smart way to get kids to learn via its reward-based quizzing approach. The company, which is showing off the service at DEMO today, runs a web site where kids can take quizzes to earn prizes that have been paid for by their… Continue Reading

DEMO: Gwabbit launches automated email contact manager

DEMO: Gwabbit launches automated email contact manager

Contact managers are ripe for a makeover. As such, Technicopia is announcing a tool called Gwabbit today at the DEMO 2009 conference that could take the tedium out of updating your email contacts.

It’s arguable that this has already been done with the automated contact information… Continue Reading

DEMO: BitGravity launches high-definition video streaming service

DEMO: BitGravity launches high-definition video streaming service

BitGravity is launching a digital video service today that allows its customers to stream high-definition videos over the Internet.

The BG Live service can stream live events in 1080p or 720p resolution (the same quality as high-end TV sets), according to the company’s announcement at DEMO… Continue Reading

DEMO: Coveroo lets you personalize your cell phones with laser imagery

DEMO: Coveroo lets you personalize your cell phones with laser imagery

At DEMO today, Coveroo is launching a service to personalize cell phones and other gadgets with laser imagery. Now you can have anything from the characters of Capcom’s Resident Evil 5 video game to Garfield etched onto the back of your phone.

Coveroo can render these… Continue Reading

Utility Scale Solar aims to bring solar costs level with coal, natural gas

Utility Scale Solar aims to bring solar costs level with coal, natural gas

Utility Scale Solar, maker of tracking devices for solar thermal installations, plans to try out its technology with clients over the next several months, and is looking for $6 million in first-round funding to do it, reports VentureWire.

Based in Palo Alto, Calif., the company is… Continue Reading

Netgear introduces more connected entertainment gadgets

Netgear introduces more connected entertainment gadgets

Connected entertainment is clearly a big theme at the International Consumer Electronics Show taking place this week in Las Vegas.

Today Netgear showed off three products that make it a lot easier to use the Internet with consumer electronics gear.

Its first product was the Netgear Internet… Continue Reading