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Looking peachy, Stacey! Miss Solomon shows off her baby bump in a salmon pink satin dress as ...

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 18:38:16 +0100

By Georgina LittlejohnBlooming: Stacey Solomon, who is seven months pregnant, showed off her baby bump in a peach satin dress as she arrived at the National Luxury Lifestyle Awards 2012She always likes to look her best and loves getting her glad rags on for a star-studded red carpet event.And Stacey Solomon was not going to let being seven months pregnant stop her making an impression on the red carpet.The reality TV star was snapped at the National Luxury Lifestyle Awards in London tonight and looked just peachy in a orange satin dress that showed

Thumb Offers A Reality Test For SXSW Winners

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 18:20:08 +0100

Every year, before, during, and after South by Southwest, everyoneâs eager declare someone the winner of the conference. Then comes the inevitable backlash, with questions about whether Popular App X will ever catch on with âregular peopleâ â or if itâs just useful to techies who are constantly checking their iPhones in search of the next party. For , mobile Q A app () is offering its own take. It made a list of the apps that seemed to be getting buzz at the conference, then polled its users on whether they actually used the apps. The results (there were 4,700 responses total, with at least 220 for each question) are being pitched as an answer to the question, âWhich SXSW Apps Do Real Americans Actually Use?â Now, you could make a list of caveats to the results thatâs longer than this post. For starters: Do we really think Thumbâs userbase is fully representative of âReal Americansâ? And doesnât the surveyâs definition of âSXSW Appâ seem a bit arbitrary? But I have to admit, I was still curious about the results, so here they

You'll be all at sea, Carol! Vorderman unveils her new yacht... ...

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 18:06:33 +0100

By Daily Mail ReporterShe's made a name for herself as a TV star with plenty of brains behind her beauty. But perhaps Carol Vorderman wasn't quite with it when she decided to rent a huge yacht. The 51-year-old posted a picture of the large vessel to her Twitter page, proudly announcing it was moored at the Bristol docks. I'll just leave it here for a bit: Carol Vorderman is renting a yacht which she has left moored at Bristol's waterfront However, it's hardly the weather for a sun-drenched cruise across the bay. In fact, it's pretty

'Where's Mum? Wish I'd known when we got Oscar': Meg Mathews and daughter Anais help launch ...

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 18:06:30 +0100

By Georgina LittlejohnEXCLUSIVEToday, across the country, millions of mothers will be greeted by their children with big smiles and arms filled with chocolates, flowers and hugs.Meg Mathews is certainly no exception and she and her 12-year-old daughter Anais will spend a lovely Mothering Sunday together in London with their beautiful Boston Terrier Oscar faithfully by their side.But the designer also thought that this would be a particularly poignant day to help launch a new campaign that has become very close to her heart, especially when she thinks about all she has gone through with her cute canine friend.

Robert Scoble Talks Startups And The Changing Face Of SXSW [TCTV]

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 16:35:05 +0100

Robert Scoble is an American blogger, technical evangelist, and author. He is best known for his popular blog, Scobleizer, which came to prominence during his tenure as a technical evangelist at Microsoft. Scoble joined Microsoft in 2003, and although he often promoted Microsoft products like Tablet PCs and Windows Vista, he also frequently criticized his own employer and praised its competitors like Apple and Google. Scoble is the author of Naked Conversations, a book on how blogs are changing...

The Real SXSW “Winner” Is The Mophie Juice Pack

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 16:00:07 +0100

So didnât âwinâ SXSW, had hypothesized, for many reasons. It did however have a close relationship to what eventually ended up winning, as itsÂ background GPS turns out to iPhone battery life. Even before SXSW, users were reporting notable reduction in battery charge when using Highlight, on average going one day from two days of use per full charge while the app is running. In the mobile app testing ground that is SXSW Interactive, the battery drain was even more pronounced. Â People crowded round the charging stations some startups had set up. Â âABC: Always be charging,â was a running joke amongst techies.Â At some point I even saw a woman at a restaurant using a charger as a scrunchie. While I didnât uninstall Highlight for the sake of my battery life like some, I did turn off its location (Settings > General > Location Services) and resorted to plain old text messaging and Foursquare to navigate Austin. In fact, Highlight actually worked really well for me the moment I left Texas, pinging me when I was randomly near David Tisch and Lockhart Steele (two people I wanted

DIY SEO Startup BrandYourself Has Nearly 6,000 Sign-Ups

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 15:35:07 +0100

BrandYourself (http://www.brandyourself.com) made the famous startup pivot earlier this month, and now it’s sharing some data about the initial results. The company started out as a way for people to control the impression they made online (http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/24/brandyourself/), both through search results and on social networks. It even recommended articles that you could read and share in your chosen subject area. Co-founder and CEO Patrick Ambron says his team eventually realized that the approach was “too much,” and that “the one BIG thing people loved about us was helping with them improve their search results.” So the new version of BrandYourself pares away all the other features, focusing exclusively on your personal search results. In both cases, BrandYourself pitches itself as a more affordable, DIY alternative to a service like Reputation.com (http://www.reputation.com). Instead of hiring someone to improve your results and paying them thousands of dollars, you can just log in to the BrandYourself dashboard, submit the links that you want to show up more prominently in your results, and get recommendations on how to improve their placement (for example, it recommended that I connect my personal website (http://www.anthony-ha.com) to a BrandYourself profile page, and also include my name in the text of the website). BrandYourself also tracks whenever the rankings change. You can get free recommendations on three links — after that you have to pay for premium membership, with pricing that starts at $9.99 per month. Ambron says the new version of BrandYourself launched on March 8, and that 5,870 people have signed up since then. And of those sign-ups, 154 of them became paying members. Oh, and this isn’t a business win, but it’s nice recognition: BrandYourself won (http://betanews.com/newswire/2012/03/14/brandyourself-com-wins-top-startup-award-at-sxsw-4th-annual-accelerator-competition/) the Best Bootstrapped Startup award at the South by Southwest Startup Accelerator earlier this week.

Fear And Loathing In Online Video

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 14:02:41 +0100

Editorâs note:Â Jay Fulcher is CEO of video technology company .Â Follow him on Twitter The story of Hollywoodâs relationship with technology reads like an on-again-off-again soap opera romance: initial feelings of fear, panic and jealousy followed by amity and intense attraction, followed, in turn, by more fear, jealousy and heated exchanges. Back in the early 1980s, MPAA President Jack Valenti went before Congress and asked them to outlaw the VCR. His graphic language infamously went so far as to . We are going to bleed and bleed and hemorrhage, unless this Congress at least protects one industry . . . whose total future depends on its protection from the savagery and the ravages of this machine . . . I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone. After the Supreme Court that personal recording devices were, in fact, legal, Hollywood discovered that people enjoyed watching movies in their own home â just as they enjoyed going to the cinema.

Mike Daisey Says His Show Is “True” Even If It’s Not True

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 13:35:06 +0100

The and of the This American Life episode retracting Mike Daiseyâs piece about Apple and Foxconn are now live. If this is an issue you care about, you should listen to the whole thing. As host , the show found âsignificant fabricationsâ in the story, to the point where âwe canât vouch for its truth.â For example, Daisey admits that he never met a worker who had been poisoned by n-hexane, as he claimed in the episode (which was a version of his one-man show âThe Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.â) Many other aspects of Daiseyâs account, like his meeting with allegedly underage Foxconn workers, were also disputed by his translator, although Daisey still says that they happened. Â In , Daisey says he stands by his work, but he regrets allowing TAL to excerpt the show because itâs ânot journalism.â One of the most amazing things about the episode was the fact that Mike Daisey is, in fact, an eloquent critic of Mike Daisey. At one point, Marketplaceâs Rob Schmitz (who tracked down Daiseyâs translator) asks, âDoes it

Up Next For Brit Morin’s Geek-Chic Lifestyle Brand: Custom Apps [TCTV]

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 13:03:14 +0100

The last time TechCrunch checked in with Brittany Morin was in mid-November 2011, when the former Googler (techcrunch.com/2011/03/23/google-tv-pm-brittany-bohnet-leaves-google-for-a-startup/) had just debuted (http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/16/brit-morin-launches-lifestyle-brand-brit-wants-to-be-silicon-valleys-martha-stewart/) her own lifestyle brand, Brit Media (http://www.hellobrit.com), aimed at positioning herself as the “Martha Stewart of Silicon Valley.” So TechCrunch TV caught up with her earlier this week in Austin, Texas at the South By Southwest Interactive (http://techcrunch.com/events/sxsw-2012/coverage/) conference to find out how things have been shaping up since the launch and what her plans are for the months ahead. According to Morin, visitor growth on her flagship HelloBrit.com (http://www.hellobrit.com) website have been robust, but what a lot of people don’t realize is that’s just the beginning of her plan. She has assembled a small team of three engineers who are currently building custom Brit Media software and apps, the first of which will launch in beta this quarter (it seems that building slick apps may be a family affair — Brittany Morin’s husband is Dave Morin (http://www.crunchbase.com/person/dave-morin), the co-founder and CEO of Path (http://www.path.com).) Brit did not give us many details about the forthcoming apps, but said they will all fit back into the ‘Brit’ brand. As Alexia Tsotsis reported back in November (http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/16/brit-morin-launches-lifestyle-brand-brit-wants-to-be-silicon-valleys-martha-stewart/), Morin had started turning the source code for her own wedding website into an app called “Weduary (http://www.weduary.com/)” that anyone could use to build their own wedding website. That could very well be the first app launched under the Brit brand — but we’ll have to wait and see for sure. Watch the interview above to see Brittany Morin talk in full about the upcoming apps, the latest lifestyle gadget she’s obsessed with, the possibility of raising outside funding, why Silicon Valley needs some “soft-core tech,” and more.

Pair Programming Considered Extremely Beneficial

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 11:09:31 +0100

Editorâs note:Â Farhan Thawar is the VP Engineering of Torontoâs . Before joining the Xtreme team, Farhan held the positions of Chief Software Architect at I Love Rewards, the Head of Search MSN Platform for Microsoft Canada and Technical Lead at Trilogy Software. This post is a response to (former Xtremer) Jon Evansâs ,Â which outlined some of the pluses and minuses of pair programming. Youâre in a car driving 100 miles per hour on a dirt road. The turns are 100Âº hairpins and there are inclines and dips that would make a normal carâs shocks fall right off their axels. Lucky for you, youâre not alone.Â You have a partner. Because there are two of you, you can split the responsibilities of getting to the finish line first â in one piece. Driver:Â focused on the intense control of the steering wheel, manning the accelerator, brake pedals, and the clutch and donât forget the all-important emergency brake Navigator: tasked with reading map directions, checking wind speed/engine lights and alerting the driver of impending turns, dips and inclines. This is the basis of pair programming.Â The deliberate practice of

Rejoice, Twitter Power Users: “Next Generation” Tweetdeck Apps Coming For Android And iOS

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 10:30:40 +0100

The big Twitter redesign at the end of last year seemed to mean that the company was . The web site and the mobile apps added âConnectâ and âDiscoverâ pages to help new users find interesting people and topics. But the unified new interface buried direct messages and other features that long-time users had grown to rely on. However, Twitter has not forgotten about its devoted base of hardcore users. You know, the types who like to do things like DM, or make custom lists of other users to track. Itâs busy hiring engineers to work on ânext generationâ mobile apps under the Tweetdeck brand. Hereâs a bit more, from a that the @Tweetdeck account has been tweeting about in recent weeks. The TweetDeck team, working from London, is looking for new team members to work on our cutting edge Android app. Weâre building the next generation of a suite of clients that millions of people love and use everyday. Youâll work on our small team, own the projects that you work on, and have a great time shipping products

Why Mobile Operators Are Becoming Mad Men

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 09:27:32 +0100

Editorâs note: Rich LeFurgy is a general partner at . LeFurgy was Founding Chairman of the IAB and sfBIG, a Venture Capitalist (WaldenVC), head of ad sales at Starwave (ESPN.com) and the Walt Disney Internet Group. Follow him on Twitter @. The characters on AMCâs television show Mad Men and the real-life mobile operators of today are pretty much the same. Both could enjoy cigars and martinis while business runs as usual, living as kings of their respective business worlds. But in 2012, both Madison Avenue and the mobile carrier world are getting turned on their heads by the likes of Google and Facebook. Both industries are re-inventing themselves as we speak, and the good news is they actually need each other to help them survive and thrive. Mad Menâs main character, Don Draper, famously said âAdvertising is about one thing: happiness.â Earlier this month, we saw one of the most interesting moves in digital media: the mobile operator for $321 million in an all-cash deal. Now thatâs happiness for Amobee. This transaction is one of the largest in the mobile

Gillmor Gang: TV or Not TV

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 08:28:37 +0100

The Gillmor Gang â Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor â pretended to care about Hipswitch, er HighLight while unwrapping Christmas in Marchâs iPad Next. After a somber opening in remembrance of @kevinmarksâ father John Marks and Firesign Theatre co-founder Peter Bergman, the Gang got down to brass pixels, the new breed of designer stalker software, and just what Tim Cook has up his sleeve for Christmas in December. Iâm still not convinced of the value of having alarms go off when @scobleizer is within 100 yards of 5,000 of his closest friends, but his argument about Twitter in the early days rings true. Whatâs a sure thing is how fast weâll use up iPad 4Gâs bandwidthÂ allotment each month. Unlike Facetime, Skype can use all the LTE it can eat, and as a personal hotspot to boot on the Verizon version. WIth hotel WiFi costing 10-15 bucks per device, $80 bucks a month for 10 gigs starts to look like a businessmanâs special. @stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @kevinmarks, @jtaschek Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor

The September Problem

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 07:18:10 +0100

. . You kids come in off my lawn, gather round the table, throw a log on the Nest, and hear now a tale of the dread and fabled Time Before The Web. In the beginning, 1 there was , and it was good: online conversations ordered by topic, built around ongoing threads rather than individual posts, so that they could and often did last for months. Then came the Web. And eventually, lo, the Web gave us Digg, and it was good, for a while. Then Digg . Then there was Reddit, and it was good, for a while. Now Reddit has . Us techies had Slashdot, until it . Now we have Hacker Newsâ¦ which is arguably . But at least we have Gawker! No, wait. â,â saith none other than Nick Denton himself, re the âtragedy of the commentsâ. Ah, but thatâs just them. Here at TechCrunch, all comments are from incisive, witty people who have

Dating show branded a sham as Take Me Out producers 'tell girls which partners to pick'

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 06:56:03 +0100

By Jane BunceNo lighty, no likey! Some contestants on the show, hosted by Paddy McGuiness, have alleged that producers try to tell them who to pick'The whole thing is totally misleading and leaves a whole lot of people feeling humiliated and exploited afterwards,' one girl apparently complained. Programme makers Talkback Thames have denied the claims. The TV show has been dogged by controversies this season, after it emerged a male contestant was an escort, and the girl he picked later revealed she used to work as a prostitute.On the popular programme, a single man tries to

Kate's Irish charm: An emerald Duchess presents St Patrick's Day shamrocks to guardsmen (and ...

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 06:55:48 +0100

By Emma ReynoldsQueenly in green: Kate looked elegant in a dress coat in traditional green as she attended her first solo military engagementThe Duchess of Cambridge looked radiant today as she presented soldiers with shamrocks to mark St Patrickâs Day.Kate wore an elegant green dress coat with a chocolate brown hat and an Irish Guards brooch that belonged to the Queen Mother as she attended the traditional parade in Aldershot.But the excitement was all too much for one young soldier, who fainted to the ground in his stiff red uniform.Lucky pup: The

Why Entrepreneurs Fail And Most Startups Are DOA

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 04:12:11 +0100

Editorâs note:Â ContributorÂ Ashkan KarbasfrooshanÂ is the founder and CEO ofÂ WatchMojo, he hosts a show on business and has published books on success. Â Follow him @ashkan. This isnât an anti-entrepreneur rant. Itâs also not a piece to discourage anyone from launching their own business.Â Itâs a warning for those who seek to launch their startup to understand some of the lesser-discussed reasons why 99% of new businesses are Dead On Arrival. As outlined, success is 1) : i)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â we define success based on what drives us, ii)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â but we tend to measure it relative to other peopleâs success and over time, iii)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â we convince ourselves to change its definition, revising upwards or downwards, depending on the conditions on the ground. 2) a : vision, ambition, determination, execution, timing and luck. Part 1: Before You Launch Your Startupâ¦ Sometimes, Macro Timing is Everything Success is as common as an eclipse, the result of externalities lining up at the right time.Â However, entrepreneurs rarely launch their business as a result of market (macro) conditions, but rather, personal (micro) timing and circumstances that have little to do with the broader landscape, even if the

Don't try this at home: The Cinnamon Challenge craze sweeps the internet (but doctors warn it ...

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 21:22:11 +0100

-Surge of participants uploading videos to YouTube results in more people attempting the challenge -Parents are warned over the dangers of taking partBy Kerry McqueeneyEasy does it: The most popular Cinnamon Challenge YouTube video shows a woman spooning a ladle of the finely-ground spice into her mouthA craze in which people swallow a spoonful of cinnamon without water could choke participants, doctors have warned.The so-called Cinnamon Challenge has resulted in some people being admitted to hospital. However, this has not stopped an army of young people taking part in the craze - and even a host

You don't really need the publicity: Unlikely guest Tom Hardy poses with toy beefeater at Legoland

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 21:21:13 +0100

By Nadia MendozaSellout: Tom Hardy attends Legoland Hotel Resort VIP opening in WindsorHe nearly came to fisticuffs with Jonathon Ross last month after embarrassing footage from his modelling days on The Big Breakfast was broadcast without his permission on the ITV1 talk show.So you'd think Tom Hardy may have a slight wobbly about doing publicity outside his thespian realm.However, the Inception actor posed alongside the likes of Zoe Ball, Michael McIntyre - and a large lego man- while attending the launch of the Legoland Resort Hotel in Windsor. Engaged: Tom proposed to

"THE COLLAPSED" from Anchor Bay Entertainment coming June 5th on DVD

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 20:44:25 +0100

âGenuinely Shocking.â â FangoriaâExtremely Effective.â â Ainât It Cool NewsWitness THE COLLAPSED from Anchor Bay Entertainment -- Making U.S. DVD Debut June 5th Beverly Hills, CA -- Already generating buzz from screenings at the Fangoria Film Festival, the Fright Night Film Festival, Rue Morgueâs Festival of Fear, as well as winning awards at the 2011 Metropolitan Film Festival of New York and the Crypticon Film Festival, Anchor Bay Entertainment presents the U.S. DVD debut of the apocalyptic thriller The Collapsed on June 5th. A chilling glimpse into one familyâs battle to stay alive while traversing a hellish landscape of barbarism and

Tim “The Freak” Lincecum Co-founds Stealth Startup 12Society, More Celebs To Come

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 20:29:19 +0100

Back in October 2010, billionaire tech investor Mark Cuban jumped into the daily deals game in gift online shopping deals startup . The startup took a somewhat alternative approach to daily deals, using a lead generation model to give publishers supplemental revenue streams. Today, it has pretty good traction. Its deals are now reaching 2.2 million email addresses (publishers included), and its sign-up rate tripled in the last three months of 2011. However, at the beginning of this year, Cuban acquired all of the JungleCents assets, allowing the startupâs co-founders, Sameer Mehta and Nadir Hyder, to take off to found a new venture. Today, weâre getting a bit of a glimpse into what the guys have been working on, as they are officially ready to announce a new startup, called . Joining Mehta as co-founders of the new venture are Chirayu Patel, a former solutions architect at VMWare, and one slightly more well-known name: San Francisco Giant and two-time Cy Young Award winner, Because the startup is still in stealth

Google Wallet’s Founding Engineer, Product Lead Already at Work on Next Startup, Tappmo

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 20:28:44 +0100

More people leaving Google Wallet means more founders for mobile payments startups! Jonathan Wall (http://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathantwall?trk=pub-pbmap), a founding engineer on Google Wallet, and Marc Freed-Finnegan (http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcff), its product lead, are already heads down on their next venture Tappmo (http://www.tappmo.com/) after having their last day at Google on March 5. They’re not saying too much about what it is aside from saying it’s about revolutionizing offline payments. (No surprise there.) “We think the next few years will bring groundbreaking developments in mobile commerce and we are excited to dive in with our new venture,” Freed-Finnegan says. Google Wallet has seen a wave of departures over the last month or so and the company may need to rethink its strategy. There are so many constituencies that Google needs to have on its side to win. But everyone including the carriers, retailers, Google, the banks and Paypal wants control. And nobody — especially the carriers — really wants to give up power. Verizon has even actively blocked the Google Wallet on the handsets it sells. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204770404577081610232043208.html) After losing so much of their direct relationship with customers over the past few years with the advent of the iPhone and Android, carriers want to hold onto what may be their last lucrative tie with consumers beyond their monthly bills. So you have Google Wallet, which has the support of one relatively weaker carrier with Sprint. Then you have the major carriers like AT T, Verizon and T-Mobile trying to collaborate on their own payments solution Isis (http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/27/isis-revealed-carrier-led-mobile-payments-venture-shows-off-its-new-app-announces-banking-partners/). Then there’s Paypal, which is trying to do cloud-based payments (http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/09/paypals-new-digital-wallet-will-offer-personalized-deals-flexible-payment-spending-and-more/) and is shying away from NFC. Then the big-box retailers like Walmart and Target are collaborating on yet another solution (http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/02/retailers-getting-into-mobile-payments-citing-security-concerns-wanting-user-data/). Then there are startups like Square, Dwolla and more. It’s a mess, really. So it will be curious to see if a few Google Wallet insiders can offer an interesting solution to a very tangled space.

The naffest couple ever: Katie Price and Leandro Penna are a kaleidoscope of neon

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 18:10:03 +0100

By Nadia MendozaTrouble in paradise... again? Katie Price looks rather angry with boyfriend Leandro Penna shopping in BrightonIt's rare to get noticed when standing next to a glamour model in neon pink - especially when she happens to be Katie Price.But it was Leandro Penna that drew the glances as he stepped out in a bizarre Adidas anorak.The garish top was a multi-coloured creation that appeared to take inspiration from Blockbusters, with a collage of geometric shapes all merged in together. Katie clearly wasn't impressed with the outfit, judging from her grumpy face.Or perhaps she was

The Agony And Ecstasy Of Mike Daisey

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 16:20:36 +0100

It seems that noted firebrand Mike Daiseyâs story â the one about the crippled, underaged factory workers who unspooled tales of woe and torture at the hands of their evil Foxconn masters at the behest of Apple â was at . He was outed as, at best, a bad journalist and at worst a fraud. To be clear, heâs a monologist and playwright and had no business telling this story (just as he really had ) but he, like so many creatives, riffed on science and technology for popular effect and got both drastically wrong. Daisey was a droning Woody Guthrie whose intentions were good but whose rigor was lacking. His efforts to expose the of our technological age â that the items we use and consume must be made by unhappy hands â were noble and I believe heâs done some good. What he failed to grasp in his effort to dramatize the horrors of modern manufacturing was its absolute banality. There is no great demon forcing humans to work at his forge. There are