It’s been about eight hours since our big Disrupt Hackathon kicked off, and all of our intrepid hackers have been busy letting the code (and the caffeine) fly ever since. I managed to tear a few of them away from their work (these folks are pretty motivated, so it took a bit of doing) to tell us a little bit about themselves and what they be trying to crank out during the wee hours of the morning.

Devon Peticolas

Devon is a senior at Rutgers University (and the newly-minted president of the school’s undergrad CS club). As you might imagine, he’s no stranger to hackathons either — he can’t quite put his finger on it, but he’s probably in the “double digits” at this point.

He’ll be spending the night working on a mobile web app that allows users to find their friends in a crowd through sort of a hot-and-cold approach — if all goes well, a phone will vibrate when it’s pointing in the direction of a user’s friend, and will vibrate even stronger as the two people get closer to each other.

Peter Verrillo

Peter is the CEO of a company called EnHatch, and during the day he works on creating apps to help promote, demo, and sell medical devices for use in surgery.

He and his team specialize in creating those 3D apps for the iPad, but he’s looking to spend his time at the Hackathon bringing that 3D experience to the iPhone. The app he’s working on tonight deals with slightly less gruesome fare — instead, it aims to walk users through the process of putting together Ikea furniture.

“If Ikea had a good app, this would be it,” he told me.

Dasara Kushi

This is Dasara’s second Hackathon (her first was a photo-centric event), and this time around she and her partner Ronn have decided to spend their night building a web app that uses a computer’s built-in webcam to analyze a user’s face and suggest places for them to go in real time.

“If you look sad, it’ll tell you to go to a comedy club,” said told me.

Their project makes pretty extensive use of the faceAPI, but there’s still plenty of work to do — they’re both still looking at pulling in new data from different APIs, to make the service more robust, but thankfully the night is still young.

Jared Zoneraich

Jared is a 14-year old hacker who attends Bergen Academy, and he’s quite excited to stay up and have fun here at his very first Hackathon. His project of choice? Nothing less than an ad delivery service, of course.

“If I weren’t doing this, I’d be doing homework,” he said.

His hacker idols include Mark Zuckerberg as well as seasoned iPhone cracker George “geohot” Hotz, who just so happened to attend Bergen back in the day as well.

Pavan Krishnamurthy

Pavan and his teammates are cranking away on an iOS app that will tell you what sort of music people in different cities are listening to – a noble and clever goal. Cities that tend to listen to faster-paced music on Rdio are labelled ‘hot,’ while more laid-back cities (Chicago in their mockup) are tagged with the “chill” label.

His team’s mockups look pretty darned solid, but we’ll soon see if the finished product lives up to their ambitions. When he’s not hacking, Pavan works at Bloomberg and (like Jared) looks up to Mark Zuckerberg as his own hero hacker.

Jon Gottfried

Jon works for Twilio (during the day) and dons his hacker cape when night falls. He and his buddies are working on a system for A/B testing Amazon products tonight — not the sexiest idea the in the world sure, but that system is only part of his team’s plan.

They hope that their testing system can be used to determine consumer desires, and use that information to whip up a subscription service — Thingscription — that’s focused on delivering those goods to people on a regular basis.

Octavian Costache

The royally-named Octavian (or Vivi, as he’s also known) and his teammates are working on a second-screen app that provides users with additional context they watch Game of Thrones, which is probably one of the geekier endeavors we’ve spotted today. Need to figure out why that guy just got stabbed? Or some lesser-known facet of some clan’s convoluted family tree? Keep your eyes peeled on this guy.

Incidentally, he is totally in love with the Khalisi (because of the dragons, not the other thing) and his Twitter is Okvivi.

Karina Ruzinov

Karina goes to Rutgers (there’s a pretty large contingent of Rutgers kids, it would seem) and is spending her summer interning for Refinery 29. She studies Computer Science and Math and she says the student parties are real ragers.

She and her team are working on a app that helps people come up with names for their Hackathon projects. It’s not quite ready for primetime yet, but when it is, it aims to inspire people by providing synonyms and rhymes for words that embody their particular project’s spirit.

Victoria Mo

Victoria is a Master’s Student in Computer Science at Columbia University and her tech role model is none other than Google’s Marissa Mayer.

She and her team are working feverishly on an app that helps users find the hottest clubs in town (and not the hottest clubs in Ontario, as it sounded when we first heard the pitch). They aim to accomplish that by posting images and videos of the clubs’ exteriors so people will be able to quickly determine how popular a particular venue is.

TechCrunch

Facebook’s IPO was obviously the single most discussed topic on Twitter today. The good folks over at social media data platform DataSift monitored what Twitter users were saying about the IPO throughout the day and came up with some interesting conclusions. Turns out, the ups and downs of how Twitter’s users felt about the stock pretty much mirrored the price of Facebook’s stock as the day progressed.

Basically, DataSift notes, every time the volume of negative chatter on Twitter increased, Facebook’s stock price dropped within 20 minutes. “So if people had traded based on signals today to buy/sell Facebook stock,” the company told us,”they might have done quite well.”

To create this graph, DataSift recorded 95,019 interactions from 58,665 authors over a period of 6 hours. Most interactions, of course, took place right during the early hours after Facebook’s stock started trading (and took an immediate dive from closer to ). The company also saw a second and much smaller uptick in interactions toward the end of the day as well.

For the most part, of course, this is just a fun exercise in tracking Twitter data. It’s worth noting, though, that quite a few recent studies that looked into the connection between Twitter posts and stock prices found that there is at least a slight correlation between Twitter sentiment and volume and stock prices.

You can find a bit more of DataSift’s data, which also takes a closer look at the total volume of posts about the Facebook IPO, here.

TechCrunch

Hundreds of Facebook employees congregated at ‘Hacker Square’ at the company’s Menlo Park headquarters this evening ahead of the company’s insanely-hyped initial public offering. Now, some of the first photos are starting to trickle in. There was a standing ovation for chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, who gave a talk before several long-time engineers bounced in while wearing capes or bringing boomboxes.

Tonight Facebook is having its 31st Hackathon to celebrate the IPO. Hackathons are a company tradition. They’re a place where engineers and other non-technical employees get to stay out all night building concepts into real products that sometimes eventually get shipped. Some of the big products that have come out of earlier Hackathons include Facebook chat and an early version of Timeline.

The company got its employees together around a big yellow crane that’s in the center of their ‘Hacker Square.’ The crane came from their old Palo Alto headquarters where it was originally put in by Agilent Technologies (the company that spun out of Hewlett Packard — arguably, the company that made Silicon Valley what it is today).

Here are some of the photos that have come in so far! The best photos are actually from Facebook product designer Francis Luu. But because we are trying not to be super lame, like various slideshow-addicted blogs that shall not be named, here is the link to his photo album. If you are a Facebook employee and are not living in ungodly fear of having your RSUs, options, etc. revoked on this special day, feel free to send us more photos at tips@techcrunch.com.

Here’s the crowd that gathered before Zuckerberg’s talk:

Here’s a new poster from Facebook’s analog research lab:

Here’s the commemorative T-shirt for the Hackathon:

TechCrunch

There’s been a lot of armchair valuation punditry across the Valley this week. As the Facebook IPO looms, our intricately entwined ecosystem of startups and investors seeks to benefit from the domino effect of a population feeling flush with cash. This is the picture that the WSJ painted in its Quora funding announcement yesterday, headline: “Former Facebook Hands Capitalize on Buzz.” Okay, sure, smart people will always adapt to a favorable environment — but the WSJ missed a deeper and more long-term dynamic at play.

“We intend to use some of this funding as a cushion in case of macroeconomic changes,” wrote Quora co-founder Adam D’Angelo in an answer to a question about what the company would do with the financing. Sure, in laymen’s terms this could read, “We’re getting while the getting’s good,” but a startup stocking up for a potential winter does not necessarily mean overvaluation. Especially when you consider that a “large portion of this money” will go to Amazon Web Services for EC2 and other bills… at least until something less expensive and more robust gets invented.

“We wanted to extend our runway,” D’Angelo wrote, about raising as optimally as possible. “[We wanted to] focus on long-term growth and quality, and lets us avoid making short term tradeoffs like many other companies.”

Earlier today I spoke to proto-Facebook investor and Quora board member, Peter Thiel, extensively about his personal investment in the startup. He reinforced the fact that Quora has a 20-year, 50-year, 100-year future if it manages to scale in a way that could maintain the quality of site discussion. Thiel admitted that the site had not yet reached the apex of its founders’ vision, but maintained that this kind of careful “slow growth” is a good thing in terms of keeping out irrelevant and spammy content.

“There’s a good chance that some day a majority of questions asked will be on the [Quora] platform,” Thiel said, explaining that its success fit his vision of a world where an emerging technology didn’t have to beat or destroy something else to be successful. Rather, it could just be. Imagine a layer of Quora’s intelligent discourse across all communication, where the knowledge contained on the site went beyond Q&A and attempted to solve grander problems than being a threaded platform for Silicon Valley squabbles.

In response to media criticism of the site’s valuation, Thiel referred to the technological prowess of Quora, and the breadth of talent retained by its 30-person team as its core appeal. Thiel — who told PandoDaily’s Sarah Lacy that “we’d be better off if people focused on doing unique things” — implied that the startup was indeed this sort of “unique thing” — independent of, and not competitive with, Wikipedia, Facebook and Google. More importantly, he implied that it wasn’t trying to be.

Aside from the team, Thiel — who uses Quora himself to keep up on Silicon Valley news — was impressed by the complicated technology behind the site, and held the fact that it was not easily replicable as being one of its primary drivers of value.

“The Samwers are never going to clone Quora,” Thiel said, resting his case.

TechCrunch

We know almost too well how smartphones perform in US market share; what we don’t usually see is how happy customers are once the shrink wrap’s off. Going by a newly-expanded American Customer Satisfaction Index, it’s the iPhone that most scratches the itch at a score of 83. Despite having just been added, Apple was noticeably ahead of a three-way tie between HTC, LG and Nokia at 75. You might not want to look if you’re a freshly-minted RIM executive: the BlackBerry made its freshman debut on the charts at the bottom, or 69. Big carriers have their own reasons to wince, too, knowing that smaller carriers like US Cellular and TracFone scored higher on the happiness meter than incumbents hiking service fees. While there’s definitely some wiggle room for your own experience to have been better or worse, if you were an iPhone owner on a regional carrier in the past few months, you were statistically the most likely to be on Cloud Nine.

Continue reading iPhone waltzes into top spot of US phone satisfaction index, small carriers trump the giants

iPhone waltzes into top spot of US phone satisfaction index, small carriers trump the giants originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 May 2012 04:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Engadget

The slow rollout of Android 4.0 to Samsung’s recent Galaxy devices continues, and the latest variation to receive Ice Cream Sandwich is the Galaxy S II LTE. We should all be familiar with the ICS feature set by now, as well as Samsung’s TouchWiz alterations. The news was spotted on Samsung’s Korean site, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see the new software popping up on devices elsewhere shortly (AT&T’s Skyrocket already saw a leaked update in March). According to a tweet from the company, it’s still working on an update for the LTE’s 720p-screened HD cousin (although we hear Tizen already works great), but you can hit the source link for more information.

Samsung Galaxy S II LTE Ice Cream Sandwich update finally arrives, GSII HD LTE keeps waiting originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 May 2012 05:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Engadget

Mobile carrier NTT Docomo today announced a move in its strategy to grow its content business outside of its traditional base of Japan: it issued a tender offer to acquire Buongiorno, a mobile content company based in Italy, paying up to ¥24 billion (0 million) for the assets.

Docomo notes in a statement that the acquisition would be made by its Germany-based subsidiary, Docomo Deutschland, and that Maruo del Rio, Buongiorno’s majority shareholder and chairman with 20 percent of Buongiorno’s stock, has already agreed to sell his stake to the carrier. The deal would see Buongiorno become a subsidiary of NTT Docomo.

This is not the first time that Docomo has made moves to build up its European/rest-of-world business in mobile content, but it is an area that has been lying somewhat dormant for a while. A decade ago, well before the mobile world was hit with the revolution that became the iPhone and then Android following closely behind, Docomo made a foray to bring its popular i-mode mobile content service to the Continent, starting out first with a partnership with France’s Bouygues Telecom with plans to extend that to other markets.

That never really followed through as a successful business, though, when the game for mobile content changed from walled gardens run by operators to app stores run by the handset makers. Since then, Docomo has also been involved in an LTE chip joint venture (with Samsung) that ended last month, as well as other European initiatives. For example, it inked a partnership with France Telecom’s Orange to co-sell a Sharp 3D handset, the Aquos SH80F. And it also owns, in Germany, a mobile payments business net mobile, which in September 2011 got an investment from Docomo of €28.4 million so that it could in turn take a controlling stake in Bankverein Werther, a private German bank with e-commerce and payment service operations. “Utilizing Bankverein Werther’s existing banking license and credit card licenses, as well as the bank’s main systems, net mobile will be able to greatly enhance its mobile payment platform,” Docomo said at the time.

This time around it looks like Docomo, which has 60 million customers in its home market, wants another local/international partner to help export its business model more effectively.

Buongiorno is one of the oldest mobile content companies around, first being established back in 1999 and currently employing 848 people. And it is profitable: in 2011 it reported revenues of €228.6 million (¥24.52 billion; 5 million) and operating profit of €7 million (¥7.5 billion; million).

Its services — which include a sprawling list of direct-to-consumer offerings and those it creates in partnership with carriers and others — cover gaming, music, casual content like wallpapers and ringtones, and mobile payments. Its services are used by some 2 billion customers in 57 countries across four continents, the company says, and you can see how this distribution channel could get used by Docomo for the services that it has created itself, in addition to those from Buongiorno.

“The acquisition will combine Docomo’s innovative mobile business and services know-how in Japan and other countries with Buongiorno’s advanced mobile technologies and extensive global customer base,” Docomo notes in its statement. “As part of expanding the businesses of both companies, Docomo expects to strengthen the foundation of its mobile platform businesses overseas.”

This is also part of the ongoing trend that we are seeing from the likes of other carriers, like Telefonica, to create new lines of revenue that take operators beyond their traditional business of mobile voice and data sales in their traditional geographic footprints. Telefonica last week launched TU-Me new app that offers an all-in-one free voice, text, photosharing offering to all iPhone owners that it hopes can help it snag a new base of users.

Pending regulatory approval, Docomo says that it will officially begin its tender offer at €2 per share, which will last 25 days. Del Rio’s 20 percent holding is equivalent to 111,888,895 shares in Buongiorno.

TechCrunch

Editor’s note: Scott Edward Walker is the founder and CEO of Walker Corporate Law Group, a boutique corporate law firm specializing in the representation of entrepreneurs. Check out his blog or follow him on Twitter as @ScottEdWalker.

This post is the second part of a three-part primer on convertible note seed financings. Part 1, entitled “Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Convertible Note Seed Financings (But Were Afraid To Ask),” addressed certain basic questions, such as (i) what is a convertible note? (ii) why are convertible notes issued instead of shares of common or preferred stock? and (iii) what are the advantages of issuing convertible notes?
This part 2 will address the economics of a convertible note seed financing and the three key economic terms: (i) the conversion discount, (ii) the conversion valuation cap and (iii) the interest rate.

Part 3 will cover certain special issues, such as (i) what happens if the startup is acquired prior to the note’s conversion to equity? and (ii) what happens if the maturity date is reached prior to the note’s conversion to equity?

What Is a Conversion Discount?

As discussed in part 1, in the context of a seed financing, a convertible note is a loan that typically automatically converts into shares of preferred stock upon the closing of a Series A round of financing.  A conversion discount (or “discount”) is a mechanism to reward the noteholders for their investment risk by granting to them the right to convert the amount of the loan, plus interest, at a reduced price (in percentage terms) to the purchase price paid by the Series A investors.

In other words, the founders are saying to the investors, in effect, if you take this risk and give us money today, we’ll reward you by giving you “20% off” at our Series A round down the road (20% being the usual discount, as discussed below).  For example, if the investors in a 0,000 convertible note seed financing were granted a discount of 20%, and the price per share of the Series A Preferred Stock were .00, the noteholders would convert the loan at an effective price (referred to as the “conversion price”) of .80 per share and thus receive 625,000 shares (0,000 divided by .80), which is 125,000 shares more than a Series A investor would receive for its 0,000 investment and a 1.25x return on paper (5,000 divided by 0,000).  (The foregoing example does not include accrued interest on the loan, which is typically about 5%-7% annually, as discussed below.)

Discounts generally range from 10% (on the low side) to 35% (on the high side), with the most common being 20%.  In Fenwick & West’s 2011 Seed Financing Survey (the “Fenwick Survey”), the percentage of convertible note seed financings that granted a discount to investors was 67% in 2010 and 83% in 2011; and the median discount was 20% in both 2010 and 2011.

As discussed in part 1 of this series, one of the significant advantages of issuing convertible notes, as opposed to shares of preferred stock, is the extraordinary flexibility they offer in connection with “herding” prospective investors and raising the round.  Clearly, a greater discount can be offered to early investors who are assuming more risk, particularly where the startup is closing its financing on a rolling basis over an extended period of time (as is the trend).

Moreover, a note can include a discount that increases over time – e.g., (i) 1.5% per month up to 25%; or (ii) 10% if the Series A round closes within 6 months, 15% if it closes between 6 and 12 months, and 20% if it closes after 12 months.  In the Fenwick Survey, the percentage of convertible note seed financings that included a discount which increased over time was 25% in 2010 and 5% in 2011.

Finally, founders should be aware that investors will sometimes push for the issuance of warrants in lieu of a discount.  In a seed round, this makes no sense and only creates more paperwork and, accordingly, higher legal fees.  In the Fenwick Survey, the percentage of convertible note seed financings that included the issuance of warrants was 0% in both 2010 and 2011.

What is a Conversion Valuation Cap?

A conversion valuation cap (or “cap”) is another mechanism to reward the noteholders for their investment risk (and for their efforts in increasing the value of the startup as a result of introductions, advice, etc.).  Specifically, a cap is a ceiling on the value of the startup (i.e., a maximum dollar amount) for purposes of determining the conversion price of the note — which (like a discount) thereby permits investors to convert their loan, plus interest, at a lower price than the purchase price paid by the Series A investors.

Using the example above, let’s assume the cap were million and the pre-money valuation in the Series A round were million.  If the noteholders invested 0,000 and the price per share of the Series A Preferred Stock were .00, the noteholders would convert the loan at an effective price of .50 per share (,000,000 divided by ,000,000) and thus receive 1,000,000 shares (0,000 divided by .50), which is 500,000 shares more than a Series A investor would receive for its 0,000 investment and a 2x return on paper (,000,000 divided by 0,000), not including any accrued interest on the loan.  Notice that if there were a 20% discount and no cap, the noteholders would only receive 625,000 shares or a 1.25x return, as noted above.

If we bump-up the pre-money valuation to million and the cap remains at million, you can see how the noteholders are rewarded (and protected): their 0,000 loan now converts at an effective price of .25 per share (,000,000 divided by ,000,000) and they would thus receive 2,000,000 shares (0,000 divided by .25), which is 1,500,000 shares more than a Series A investor would receive for its 0,000 investment and a 4x return on paper (,000,000 divided by 0,000), not including any accrued interest on the loan.  Again, if there were a 20% discount and no cap, the noteholders would only receive 625,000 shares or a 1.25x return.

As you can see, noteholders with a 20% discount and no cap would receive 625,000 shares whether the pre-money valuation in the Series A round were million, million or million.  This is why sophisticated investors vehemently argue that a note without a cap (i) misaligns the interests of the founders and the investors; and (ii) penalizes investors for their efforts in helping the startup increase its value.  The math can be tricky, but the bottom line is that noteholders without a cap do not share in any increase in the value of the startup prior to the Series A round.

Accordingly, as discussed in detail in part 1, a cap is akin to a valuation in a priced round (i.e., if the startup were issuing shares of common or preferred stock); however, the beauty of a cap is that it is not a valuation for tax purposes — which facilitates the financing by allowing the founders to grant different caps to different investors.

In the Fenwick Survey, the percentage of convertible note seed financings that included a cap was 83% in 2010 and 82% in 2011; and the median valuation cap was million in 2010 and .5 million in 2011.

How Do the Discount and the Cap Interrelate?

If the convertible note includes both a discount and a cap, the applicable language will typically provide that the conversion price will be the lower of (i) the price per share determined by applying the discount to the Series A price per share; and (ii) the price per share determined by dividing the cap by the Series A pre-money valuation.  As reflected in the examples above, the reason the conversion price is the “lower of” (not the “higher of”) is because the lower the conversion price, the more shares the noteholders are issued upon conversion.

In the first example above where the discount was 20%, the cap was million and the pre-money valuation was million, we saw that the conversion price was (i) $.80 when we applied the discount to the Series A price and (ii) $.50 when we divided the cap by the pre-money valuation.  Accordingly, the conversion price would be $.50 (the lower of) for purposes of computing the number of shares issued to the noteholders upon conversion.

Now watch what happens if we drop the pre-money valuation to million:  Applying the discount, the conversion price, of course, stays the same at $.80; but when we divide million (the cap) by million (the pre-money valuation), we get $.83, which is obviously higher than $.80 — and thus the discount applies, not the cap.  This is a bit counter-intuitive because the pre-money valuation exceeds the cap by million.  Notice, however, that unless the pre-money valuation were greater than ,250,000, the cap would not be triggered (,000,000 divided by ,250,000 equals $.80).

If this weren’t confusing enough, there is one other complex issue that founders need to be aware of with respect to discounts and caps: the additional liquidation preference that is created.  Indeed, this is a particular problem, and could result in a substantial windfall to investors, in a large convertible note financing with a low conversion price.

For example, in a million convertible note financing with a 50% discount (or a 50% conversion cap ratio), the noteholders would receive million worth of shares of Series A Preferred Stock upon conversion (not including accrued interest), which would include whatever liquidation preference is attached to the shares (typically 1x).  Accordingly, the noteholders would receive an extra million of liquidation preference.

There are several different approaches to solving this issue, the most elegant of which is to convert the notes into a different series of preferred stock (e.g., Series A-1), with a liquidation preference per share equal to the conversion price; however, for purposes of this post, it’s enough for founders simply to be aware of this issue and how it relates to discounts and caps.

What is the Typical Interest Rate and How Do the Investors Get Paid?

The third and final piece of the economics puzzle is the interest rate component.  Again, a convertible note is a loan and typically requires the startup to pay simple (not compounded) interest on the amount of the loan.  Interest rates on convertible notes have historically been in the range of 7%-10% annually, but recently have dropped to the 5%-7% range.  In the Fenwick Survey, the median annual interest rate in convertible note seed financings was 6% in 2010 and 5.5% in 2011.

As alluded to in the examples above, the interest is not paid in cash on a periodic basis like a typical loan, but instead accrues (or accumulates), and then the total amount of interest due is added to the loan amount and converted into shares of preferred stock upon the closing of the Series A round.  For example, if the interest rate were 5% in a 0,000 convertible note seed financing and the Series A closing occurred on the one-year anniversary of the convertible note closing, the investors would convert an additional ,000 (0,000 x .05).

Each state has its own laws (called “usury” laws) that limit the maximum interest rate that may be charged on a loan.  In California, for example, unless an exemption applies, the maximum annual interest rate for a non-consumer loan is the higher of (i) 10% or (ii) 5%, plus the rate charged by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco on advances to member banks on the 25th day of the month prior to the date of the loan (or, if earlier, the date of the written loan commitment).

TechCrunch

In the watch world the Meccanico dG watch is a bit of a legend. Originally debuted back in 2008, it helped bridge the gap between modern tech toys and high-end mechanical watches. The all-mechanical design features dual time displays. One, a standard analog dial. Second, a digital display that uses countless small parts to indicate a second time zone like the piece’s electronic cousins. Incredibly complicated, the Meccanico dG brought new people into the world of high-horology that previously would not pay attention to what they might have considered stuffy mechanical toys for traditionalists.

You can see more hands on photos here but as you see it’s quite a looker.

The Mecanico dG comes in a large case built of titanium or other materials. There are a few versions of the pieces at this point in 2012. Much of the dial is skeletonized to allow you to see the mechanism in detail. It is produced by Swiss watch brand de Grisogono – known for its edgy, avant-garde designs. The Meccanico dG is likely their most ambitious watch to date, and is a fantastic watch to wear and operate. It’s manually wound movement works rather flawlessly, and the entire package is certainly in line with its more than 0,000 price tag.

TechCrunch

In an interview published by China Daily today, Terry Gou, chairman of Foxconn, confirms the massive manufacturing company is making preparations for an Apple television set called iTV. Gou also states that neither development nor manufacturing has begun. Apparently, per China Daily at least, the television set will have an aluminum construction, Siri voice controls and FaceTime video calling.

This is the most solid report to date of the long-fabled Apple HDTV. The product has been rumored for the last several years. So far both Steve Jobs and now Tim Cook have called the Apple TV, the company’s set-top box, a hobby. But it seems the company is almost ready to turn its avocation into an occupation.

Gou’s claims published in today’s China Daily report line up very nicely with previous rumors including Cult Of Mac’s claims from last week. The iTV, or as I have long called it, the Apple HDTV, seems like it would be an iMac designed for the living room. An Apple HDTV will likely use a very similar branding and design plan as the iMac with near-edgeless glass and aluminum frame. It would also hopefully have a similar I/O port design, allowing consumers the luxury of having all the ports located in one location. China Daily also indicates that Foxconn is teaming up with Sharp to produce this set, which makes sense given Sharp’s dominance in LCD manufacturing.

But as China Daily indicates, production nor development has started on this product yet, seemingly indicating that it won’t hit the market in 2012. It’s been also rumored that Apple is trying to line up more content partners to bolster iTunes’s library or even perhaps cobble together a legitimate alternative to cable TV. Whenever it hits, the iTV, Apple HDTV, or whatever it will be called will likely be the biggest TV news (albeit perhaps not the most popular selling unit) since the Beatles appeared on Carson.

TechCrunch

HTC EVO 4G LTE preview

HTC One X for AT&T review

HTC One S for T-Mobile review

HTC is on a roll in the US, first releasing the One S for T-Mobile and the One X for AT&T. Now, with the EVO 4G LTE on Sprint, it’s ready to shift to the CDMA realm in a different costume. Internally, it’s incredibly close to what’s offered in the One series’ flagship, but the Now Network has made a few tweaks to the device so it’ll adjust to life as the latest smartphone in the fabled EVO lineup. This time it’s packing a powerful processor, gorgeous display and the ability to connect to the still-dormant LTE. It’s eager to show its face in retail stores beginning May 18th for 0, placing it in the high end of Sprint’s selection.

This review, however, is just a bit different from any we’ve done before. How so? To our knowledge, we’ve never done one in New Orleans before. But when a phone gets dropped in our lap at CTIA 2012, we’re naturally going to put it through its paces, regardless of location. As it shares so many commonalities with its One brethren, we’ve been expecting a very similar fit, feel and performance. In our review, we’ll take you through what’s different and what’s better or worse. Is this the best device to grace the hands of Sprint customers? Follow us past the break to find out.

Continue reading HTC EVO 4G LTE for Sprint review

HTC EVO 4G LTE for Sprint review originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 13:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Engadget

So first thing’s first: We’re not being sold! Instead, we’ve just hired a bunch of brilliant writers and a new COO. Also, we’ve seen a resurgence of community support (with over a thousand people attending our NYC meetup last night, for example), are back around 12% on the much-lauded Techmeme leaderboard and are gearing up for our NYC Disrupt conference.

Our traffic is up with regards to unique visits year over year and we are working on getting our pageviews up to pre-awful redesign levels. More importantly, we cheer stuff like “TechCrunch fuck yeah” all the time in our company Yammer, which for us is a better indicator of progress than all of the above.

Sure, being um, reporters, we heard the sale rumors too. At some point, Jason Calacanis was also supposedly somehow in, and all the other tech blogs somehow won the Mega Millions and coughed up tens of millions of dollars to buy us … We heard the rumors, but didn’t publish them. It’s actually amazing how much bullshit information/spin is out there (so be careful what you believe).

So what actually happened? Well according to our sources including Tim Armstrong himself officially, he and a gaggle of Aol folks decided it might be smart to turn TC, Engadget and some other tech properties (including some yet to be acquired) into a separate company/entity, valued at 0 million.

Because we’re in the middle of these exceptionally exuberant times, they set off to raise money from notable Valley VCs like Andreesen Horowitz and some other prominent angels, million to be exact for a 20% share of whatever this ur-tech blog conglomerate would be. Aol would retain an 80% share according to what I’ve heard about the plan.

Eventually, as Armstrong alludes to in this Ad Age article, the plan was scrapped, and Aol decided it might be a better idea if it retained 100% ownership of its tech vertical as it views TechCrunch and Engadget as the “crown jewels” of its media properties. We mean sure #humblebrag.

There’s sort of an unwritten (and eventually) written rule in blogging that you’re not supposed to attack smaller blogs, which sometimes makes it a challenge to respond when false information gets published. We figure this story got skewed because PandoDaily is going through its own troubles, and looking for a target to project its drama onto; Sometimes not wanting to seem weak makes you seem weak.

Unfortunately in this specific case the target was us. But, because it’s hard out here for a tech blog, we wish former co-worker Sarah Lacy and the rest of her talented team the best of luck.

Aside from that, as a news organization, we want to be the ones to tell you the truth, especially about our own company. You shouldn’t expect anything else, in return for your readership and trust.

TechCrunch

Email is typically static. Because of security concerns, virtually none of the standard web-based and desktop email clients let you run JavaScript code in an HTML email, for example. Microsoft’s Hotmail made a small push in this direction in 2010, when it started whitelisting emails from a few trusted third-parties, including Orbitz, Netflix and LinkedIn. Now, it looks like Google is also moving in this directions (at least for emails from its own products), because starting today, Google+ notifications in Gmail will become a lot more interactive.

This is actually Google’s second step in this direction. Since March, Google+ users were already able to add people to their circles from inside the Google+ notifications email.

With today’s update, however, Google is basically bringing the full interactive Google+ experience to these messages. Users can now view, comment on and +1 posts from their inboxes. Responses from their friends will also appear in real time right inside the message.

These features will roll out to all Google+ users over the next week (and if you’d rather not get Google+ notification emails, you can also turn them off here).

It’s worth noting, by the way, that a number of startups, including PowerInbox – which we wrote about earlier this year – are also trying to make email more interactive and turn it into more of a platform. The PowerInbox browser plugin, for example works with Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Outlook and its API is already being used by a number of other email clients, including Unified Inbox, already.

TechCrunch

If you’re an event organizer selling tickets through Eventbrite, it’s about to get easier to find sponsors, thanks to integration with a startup called SponsorHub.

SponsorHub founder and CEO Robert Johnston compares the event sponsorship industry to online advertising 12 or 15 years ago — largely unchanged and ripe for disruption by digital technology. That’s where SponsorHub comes in, serving as an ad network for connecting sponsors with event organizers.

With the new partnership, Johnston says organizers can move event listings from Eventbrite to SponsorHub and vice versa with just the click of a button. So you can set up your ticketing and then start looking for sponsorships with barely any extra effort. He adds that it’s a particularly good fit because Eventbrite and SponsorHub both aim at the event “middle market” — things that aren’t giant professional sports games but are still large and high-quality — which represent billion in sponsorships.

Johnston says that for now, there’s no financial component to the deal. It was more about the two companies realizing that it “makes sense to help each other.” Eventbrite approached SponsorHub recently about working together, he says — apparently the event site had been looking at how to add sponsorship capabilities, and partnering seemed easier than building out the technology on its own. SponsorHub, meanwhile, may be able to expand the number of events in its system dramatically.

TechCrunch

As a resident of NYC, I find little use for the SF Climates iOS app that all of my San Francisco-based friends (read: social media whores) are boasting over today.

But a lot of you do live there, so you might find it useful. Let’s say you live in the Marina and for some reason need to go to the Dogpatch or vice versa but you’re unsure what the weather is like. Or maybe the grit of the Mission is getting to be a bit much and you want to hang out with a bunch of babies in Noe Valley. Do you pack a sweatshirt or put on shorts?

From personal inexperience, I’ve never been able to layer properly in San Francisco and this would have come in handy last week. Powered by Weather Underground, the free app boasts current temp, wind (speed and direction) and forecast for each of the City by the Bay’s 17 different microclimates (read: neighborhoods).

If only they’d launch one for NYC. *sigh*

Since the app has been in the wild for three weeks, there’s bound to be a few of you who have been using it. If so, have you found it useful?

SF Climates [Apple App Store]

TechCrunch