Make text bigger  Make text smaller  Toggle background color  Bookmark/Share






Joo Joo CrunchPad tablet

Michael Arrington’s CrunchPad tablet is now the Joo Joo tablet. Fusion Garage has finally come clean with its side of the story in regards to the CrunchPad debacle, and just unveiled its new Arrington-free version of the device: the Joo Joo. The way Fusion Garage tells it, the device was already in the works at the time of the original TechCrunch post about the idea, and that Michael Arrington and co. made zero contributions to the development of the device — and apparently don’t have any sort of contract to prove otherwise. The device is much along the lines of what we’d been hearing: it runs a UNIX-based OS, boots straight to a web browser (otherwise no apps at all), weighs about 2.4 pounds and features a 12.1-inch capacitive touchscreen. There are no physical buttons on the slate outside of the on-off switch, which taps into a 9 second boot time. Under the hood there’s a 4GB SSD, WiFi (no 3G), an accelerometer and about 5 hours of battery life. Pre-orders start on December 11th, with a dream-shattering $499 pricetag bringing this thing back into the realm of reality.

Joo Joo CrunchPad Tablet

Chandrasekar “Chandra” Rathakrishnan, founder and CEO of Fusion Garage, unveiled today the hardware that was to be the CrunchPad.

It is now named the JooJoo, an African word for magic.

It will be available for preorder this Friday at TheJooJoo.com.

Details:

It will cost $499. It has a $12.1 inch capacitive touch.
Chandra says the device will take 8-10 weeks to ship.
He says there will be sufficient quantities to meet demand.
He says there are retail partners coming in the future.
The battery will allow you to stay online for 5 hours.
It is WiFi only.
The operating system was built from the ground up. It boots up in nine seconds.

Posted
December 7th, 2009

Filed
Tech

Tagged




1 Comment

Apple is Evil, Apple is Awesome

I’ve had a half dozen or so longer posts about Apple brewing in my head the past couple of weeks. There is no shortage of controversy surrounding the company right now thanks largely to the hugely popular and hugely unpopular aspects of the iPhone. But Jason Calacanis’ post yesterday entitled “The Case Against Apple-in Five Parts” serves as a great springboard for bringing up a lot of it. – from TechCrunch

It is the end. Jason “The Animal” Calacanis is thinking about maybe quitting using Apple products, reporting that the company has gone all corporate and mainstream and that Steve has lost his hippie, dippy LSD edge. Look at this language, people:

Years and years after Microsoft’s antitrust headlines, Apple is now the anti-competitive monster that Jobs rallied us against in the infamous 1984 commercial. Steve Jobs is the oppressive man on the jumbotron and the Olympian carrying the hammer is the open-source movement. – from CrunchGear

Posted
August 9th, 2009

Filed
Tech

Tagged

No Comments

TechCrunch publishes sensitive hacked Twitter info

Technology news website TechCrunch published on Wednesday sensitive internal documents belonging to Twitter, including financial projections, offering a rare glimpse into the wildly popular microblogging site. Twitter has a targeted revenue run rate of $140 million by the end of 2010, with the expectation it would record its first revenue — a modest $400,000 — in the third quarter of this year, according to a document Techcrunch published that it said was sent by a hacker.

There is clearly an ethical line here that we don’t want to cross, and the vast majority of these documents aren’t going to be published, at least by us. But a few of the documents have so much news value that we think it’s appropriate to publish them. – from Techcrunch

Posted
July 15th, 2009

Filed
Tech

Tagged


No Comments

Marissa Mayer On Google Betas

Posted
May 22nd, 2009

Filed
Tech
Video

Tagged


No Comments

Michael Arrington Talks About Leaving TechCrunch

Here’s Michael talking about his sabbatical in his own words:

Posted
January 30th, 2009

Filed
Tech

Tagged

No Comments

Michael Arrington to leave TechCrunch

This actually sucks. After being spit on, Michael Arrington is taking a leave of absence from TechCrunch. Good for him. He continues to tell of his experience of being stalked this past year. No one deserves this. Have a margarita on us and toss away the iPhone, Michael. PS. Crazy People, stop being so damn crazy.

ff_arrington2_f

Yesterday as I was leaving the DLD Conference in Munich, Germany someone walked up to me and quite deliberately spat in my face. Before I even understood what was happening, he veered off into the crowd, just another dark head in a dark suit. People around me stared, then looked away and continued their conversation. – from Techcrunch

Here’s buzz from the Interwebs:

Granted, Arrington is not the kind of blogger you’d describe as “nice.” I met him once, at a three-day conference last summer. He was cordial, but hard — the kind of person you’re careful approaching because he seems immune to a smile. As for his writing, it’s sometimes cold, personal, provocative and sometimes mean — a combination writers wrap up in the word “snark.” In the opinion of Eric Lundquist at Computerworld, that’s enough to lay at least some of the blame for Arrington’s predicament on Arrington himself. – from Seattle

What is different about Arrington is his uniquely influential position in the technology space. He has a controversial reputation, with persistent claims by rivals and disgruntled entrepreneurs – despite his frequent disclaimers on posts – about conflicts between his own investments and the companies he writes about. – from Guardian

Arrington, for a reason no one has ever pinpointed, attracts haters at a level far beyond what you’d expect for what is basically an online trade magazine. I learned this firsthand when I wrote for gossip site Valleywag from 2006 to 2008. Despite Valleywag’s cruel, personal posts, we received almost no hate mail and were never accosted in public. Instead, we got mail, phone calls and in-person pleas from people who begged us to take down Mike Arrington. The most common accusation was that TechCrunch sold endorsements of startups, either in exchange for advertising buys on the site, or for outright cash payments. – from The Standard

Posted
January 28th, 2009

Filed
Tech

Tagged

2 Comments

Demonstration of Michael Arrington’s CrunchPad Prototype

picture-112

File this under “this looks frakin’ awesome.” Can TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington do what Apple can’t do? Take a peek at the below video, and it seems he’s getting close. Even if it does cost $299 (instead of originally $200) — the CrunchPad would be a killer device. As I’m an iPhone fan, as are my friends, all we keep on saying is “Wouldn’t it be great if Apple releases the same device, but larger, in the tablet format?” I, for one, am tired of squinting at the tiny NY Times iPhone App. And, who needs a douchebaggy Kindle? Well, Arrington has done what others can’t. I can’t wait to see this product in stores.

The device has a 12-inch touchscreen with a 4:3 aspect ratio (which is ideal for web browsing in my opinion). It is powered with a Via Nano processor, which has performed at par with the Intel Atom in our testing. 1 GB of ram (its more than we need) and a 4 GB flash drive to store the OS and browser and any cache. Resolution is 1024×768, which means the vast majority of websites are viewed in full width without scrolling. The device also has wifi, an accelerometer (so when you turn the screen on its side you can view more of a web page), a camera and a four cell battery. Total cost of the device, when we include estimates for the case, codecs and other miscellaneous items, is just over $200. Prototype B is actually much less expensive because the screen we used isn’t very good. The price estimate includes a much better, more expensive LCD. – from Techcrunch

Here’s the responses from the Internets:

They don’t seem to be heading toward production anytime soon, so don’t cross your fingers, but you’ll undoubtedley want to see if it’s any good for yourself in the breathtaking video after the break. – from Engadget

Finally, the design of the case in prototype B sucks. It’s thick and unwieldy. Mike says that “It’s about twice as thick as is needs to be without further engineering – we just built in a safety thickness in case of heat or other issues.” Getting it down to .7″ thick and removing much of the unnecessary border around the screen will go a long way to making it consumer friendly. From the screens, it also looks like the bezel rides quite a bit higher than the screen surface. The iPhone face is one smooth surface, something that make it feel like a quality product a person would want to own. – from Elliotback

I’ve been wanting a simple PC-style device to surf the web quickly and easily in front of the TV or in the kitchen. Laptops are so-so for this, netbooks are a step in the right direction, but this touchscreen tablet prototype would be perfect. If it actually makes it into production, that is. – from Post Gazette

Posted
January 19th, 2009

Filed
Tech

Tagged



No Comments

10,000 iPhone Apps, 9,910 of them Suck

So over at Techcrunch, there’s a story about there being 10,000 iPhone Apps on the iTunes store. (Just a note, isn’t it time to change the name of the iTunes store?)

148Apps, which tracks and reviews iPhone Apps, says 10,000 applications have now been released on the iPhone App store (the site is named after the fact that you can add up to 148 applications to an iPhone or iPod touch).

But when it comes down to it, less is more. There is like what, 10 really good iPhone Apps? Most are crap or simply retarded. Me, I just want a New York Times App that doesn’t crash every 2 seconds. And I think it is hilarious that the best two apps were created by Google, not Apple (Maps and new Voice Search). Why hasn’t the Apple team created more killer Apps, other than um Remote? PS. And stop updating your App every other day — I’m tired of seeing the same App always needing an update. What are ya — Microsoft? Jeeze…

Posted
November 29th, 2008

Filed
Tech

Tagged



1 Comment

Microsoft in $20 Billion Yahoo deal?

SOFTWARE giant Microsoft is in talks to acquire Yahoo’s online search business for $20 billion (£13 billion).

The proposal forms the centrepiece of a complex transaction that would see Microsoft support a new management team to take control of Yahoo. But there is no intention of Microsoft tabling another takeover bid for the web giant, after its aborted $47.5 billion offer this summer.

It is thought that Jonathan Miller, ex-chairman and chief executive of AOL, and Ross Levinsohn, a former president of Fox Interactive Media, have been lined up to lead the new management team. Senior directors at Microsoft and Yahoo are understood to have agreed the broad terms of a deal, but there is no guarantee that it will succeed.

- from Times Online

It’s time to finally end the Microsoft-Yahoo stalemate, and I’ve got a few suggestions.

I know Steve Ballmer said last week that acquisition talks are “over.”

Of course, he doesn’t want to buy the whole train wreck.

But Ballmer also reminded everyone at Microsoft’s annual shareholder meeting in Bellevue that he’s still interested in Yahoo’s search business.

He’ll get it eventually, but it’s like watching a bad mystery or Seattle building light rail: exciting at first, but once you figure out the ending, it starts putting you to sleep.

What’s the holdup, now that regulators pushed Google out of the picture?

One take is that Microsoft hasn’t been able to figure out whom to negotiate with in Sunnyvale. It went nowhere with the wishy-washy board of directors or the flip-flopping Chief Yahoo, Jerry Yang.

- from Seattle

Eric Schmidt is fond of saying it would take Google 300 years to achieve its goals. I always thought he must have been at least partly joking. The shelf life of Internet companies is short; it’s taken Yahoo and eBay little more than a decade to reach what appears to be their respective “best-if-used-by” dates.

And judging from the way investors have been treating Google’s stock, you’d think it was also on track to face an early downgrade from Internet giant to also-ran. After hitting an all-time high of $747.24 a share in November 2007, Google’s stock slid to as low as $247.30 a week ago — a 67-percent drop (the shares closed at $292.96 in a shortened trading day Friday). True, most stocks have suffered from widespread selling, but consider that rival Microsoft is down about 50 percent from its 2007 peak.

- from GigaOm

Meanwhile, Techcrunch says this is BS:

Let’s just compare this to the deal Microsoft previously offered to buy Yahoo’s search business outright.

That involved an $8 billion direct investment in Yahoo in exchange for 16% of the company, plus $1 billion in cash for the search business. And that was expected to generate an extra $1 billion in operating income.

So how does the new deal generate twice as much income going into an economic downturn? And why would Microsoft agree to anything other than complete ownership of Yahoo’s search business? And how does the search business go from being worth $1 billion earlier this year to $20 billion in two years?

Like I said, it doesn’t make much sense.

- from Techcrunch

Posted
November 29th, 2008

Filed
Tech

Tagged


No Comments