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Posts Tagged ‘from-the-event’

TechCrunch writer Jason Kincaid traveled down to Los Angeles earlier today to cover the launch of Google Music Onebox. In addition to his live notes from the event and the panel, he managed to point his camera at just about everyone involved in the new service: Google Director Product Management Search R.J. Pittman, MySpace Music President Courtney Holt and LaLa founder Bill Nguyen. Jason also recorded his own first demo of the product, which didn’t go so well based on the mouse and browser setup.

Key takeaways – Google will integrate new partners as it makes sense. And while MySpace knew about the negotiations between iLike and Google prior to announcing their acquisition of iLike in August, the deal was far from certain. More on that in a subsequent post.

All are below:

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

The Europas, the inaugural TechCrunch Europe Awards 2009 for European and EMEA tech companies, were held last night, Thursday July 9, 2009 in London. Check out our live blog from the event. For these inaugural awards, over 400 entrants were voted on by the industry and the results merged with those from 19 expert advisors from across Europe. Here are the winners, highly commended and finalists in each category. Congratulations to all!

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

As we announced back in February, TechCrunch is coming to Berlin on June 10 and we hope you’ll join us for an afternoon of speakers and startup pitches, and an evening of networking. There is an amazing tech scene in Germany and we want to do our best to showcase this. That’s why we’re partnering with several local entities on the ground to really display the best of the German scene. You can grab a ticket here.

We also want to involve you in building the content for the event. So I have two requests. First, I’d love to hear from potential speakers who can give a quick-fire, 15 minute talk on any of the topics below. Secondly, we will also be running a pitch competition, so if you want to be considered for this please get in touch (criteria for pitching and contact details are below). This is your chance to get in front of the TechCrunch audience.

We’re putting this event on with a number of great partners. Our Location sponsor is Zanox, a global market leader for performance-based online marketing. Our media partner is Gruenderszene, the magazine for founders and people interested in founding a company. Sevenload, the social media network for Web TV, will be streaming the event live onto TechCrunch.com. And Seedcamp, the Europe-wide travelling startup competition, will be working with us on content and we’ll be showcasing the winners of Seedcamp Berlin the previous day (June 9). We’ll obviously also be doing a wrap-up post after-wards, talking about the startups that pitched and any other news from the event.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

A new screen-sharing app launched today from drop.io, which keeps adding features to its private file-sharing service. The new product is called present.io and it lets you set up a screen-sharing presentation with multiple participants in just a few clicks. Present.io has a lot in common with drop.io’s chat feature which it added last month, except that it looks like this scales to hundreds of participants and is designed specifically for webinars and group presentations.

Present.io requires no downloads or installs and pretty much instantaneously tracks whatever the presenter is doing on his computer with all of the watchers see on theirs. He can go through slides, open documents via a Scribd embed, play videos, show photos, play music, and move his cursor around, and everyone logged into the presentation sees the same thing. When he is going through slides, he can expand them into full-screen mode to show greater detail, and text chat is integrated into the app at the bottom so everyone can chime in. The service also includes a live conference call line.

It looks pretty slick. Try it out here. One downside is that it appears to be a one-way tool. Participants can’t take control of the presentation to add their own media or drive the presentation, unlike other free screen-sharing apps such as Adobe’s Acrobat.com (which is my personal favorite). Unlike Acrobat.com or WebEx, you don’t see the presenter’s desktop, only the files he chooses to show within present.io. So this would not be something you would use to show something in a browser, which is unfortunate because demos often default to the browser when the presenter wants to go off on a tangent or forgot to add something to his deck. Other than those concerns, present.io is a solid addition to drop.io’s ever-expanding set of features. Below is a demo video describing present.io.

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Aha Mobile, a startup that is developing a car-friendly informational iPhone app, has secured $3 million in Series A financing from Venrock. Currently in development, Aha’s product is focused on safely connecting drivers to relevant information about the world around them via a mobile device.

Aha’s vision is to create an iPhone app that gives drivers the information they need outside the car, such as what’s traffic like ahead? Where is the nearest bathroom? Where can I grab a cup of coffee before my next meeting? Aha’s CEO, Robert Acker, would not reveal many details about the product since it’s still in development and testing but says that Aha will use the iPhone’s GPS capabilities and will use voice recognition technology to operate search queries. Acker says the app will also provide directions to users but will be focused on providing simple directions.

A free app, Aha Mobile will be be driver-focused, but the company won’t reveal much more about the iPhone app that it is planning to release to the public during the summer. Currently, Aha is looking for drivers around the country to test a beta version of its application while it prepares for launch later this summer. People can apply to be a beta tester here and potentially win iTunes gift certificate if they participate in the beta.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.