The future of the Crunchpad tablet designed by Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch was uncertain for a while until news about the device was brought up during a podcast called The Gillmor Gang. During the podcast Arrington said that the price is $300-$400 and that the Crunchpad is “streamrolling around.” He also mentioned that there is opportunity for “soft revenue” and “sponsorships.” The reason why there has not been much news about the availability of the device is because Arrington is working on making sure that the tablet is “perfect.”

DanceJam is a website that focuses on videos of people dancing. DanceJam was founded by Geoffrey Arone, Anthony Young, and MC Hammer (Stanley Burrell). According to a TechCrunch source, the company will soon be acquired by Purevideo Networks. TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is an angel investor in DanceJam. The financial details were undisclosed by the source. DanceJam launched around November 2007 and raised $4.5 million in total funding.

As many of you know by now, our friendly rivals at TechCrunch are building a new electronic tablet called the Crunchpad, slated to be released by this November.  Apparently Best Buy Chief Marketing Officer Barry Judge got a chance to play around with the prototype.

Judge tweeted “Just met chief blogger at Tech Crunch.  Talked about the Crunchpad and saw a prototype.  Great looking device, think it will be a real hit.”  This just tells me a couple of things.  The Crunchpad may actually have a chance against a rumored upcoming Apple tablet computer.  And this also tells me that Best Buy seems to be a bigger fan of TechCrunch than he is with Gizmodo.

An hour before Judge tweeted meeting Arrington, he tweeted that he met YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley to discuss ways to better leverage the video website.  He also asked his followers for ideas on what other retailers do to use YouTube well.  Here’s my two word answer for Judge: viral videos.  The Improv Everywhere group hit over one million views in their viral video of sending a bunch of blue shirt, khaki wearing agents into a Best Buy store.

Crunchpad is an uncoming tablet device that was rolled out of a project by technology blog TechCrunch.com.  It turns out that the details of his project have been leaked by the Straits Times in Singapore.  Arrington was not very happy about the leak as he wrote the following message on Twitter:

re crunchpad, obviously i’m completely rips**t mad about all this unauthorized bs press: http://bit.ly/2dVjBQ wtf.

The news story by the Straits Times reports that the Crunchpad will be available starting this November, but Arrington denies it and calls the Strait Times b.s.  I think that the news story sounds credible because the paper actually met with Fusion Garage, the company behind the Crunchpad production.

The device is expected to retail for $400.  Some of the features include WiFi, 3G access (meaning TechCrunch needs to sign a telecomm deal), custom OS based on Webkit, and one USB port.  The applications on the tablet will be web-based.  Rumor has it that the measurements are 13×8 inches and weight is 2.6 lbs.

More details as they become available.

Michael Arrington launched the TechCrunch network about four years ago and now it generates about $6 million in revenue as of last year from advertising, events, and other sources.  This year the company expects to bring in more than that.

Now Arrington is turning his focus into the hardware sector.  He is working on a new device called the CrunchPad and has registered a company called CrunchPad Inc.  The CrunchPad is a touch-screen tablet made for surfing the web and using video chat.

“We’re going to make some really big announcements,” stated Arrington in an interview with the San Francisco Business Times. “We’re full on. These prototypes are real.”  CrunchPad Inc. now has 14 employees in Singapore.

Angel Investor Ron Conway said that Arrington “understands the inner workings of Silicon Valley, and because he’s been around the valley so long, people trust him and trust his judgment.”  Conway himself is considering to invest in CrunchPad.

Over the last week, Facebook has been criticized for not deleting groups that promote the denial of the Holocaust.  The biggest debate around these groups was the issue of free speech and Facebook’s terms of service (TOS).  Brian Cuban, a Dallas-based attorney and brother of Mark Cuban, has been pushing for the removal of the Holocaust denial groups.

“The Holocaust Denial movement  is nothing more than a pretext to allow the preaching of hatred against Jews and to recruit other like minded individuals to do the same.  Allowing these groups to flourish on Facebook under the guise of ‘open discussion’ does nothing more than help spread their  message of hate,” wrote Brian Cuban on his blog.  “Is this the kind of open discussion that Facebook wants to encourage?  Is this really where you want to draw your line?”

Since Cuban started pushing for the removal and additional coverage was made at TechCrunch, two out of the five groups have been disabled.  Three of them remain.  Facebook has pushed for the removal of pictures that show breastfeeding and even recently banned a Ku Klux Klan group.  Why they are taking their time removing the Holocaust Denial groups is a mystery to me.

Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt responded the controversy being stirred by Brian Cuban and Michael Arrington (TechCrunch).  Schnitt wrote “Many of us at Facebook have direct personal connection to the Holocaust, through parents who were forced to flee Europe or relatives who could not escape. We believe in Facebook’s mission that giving people tools to make the world more open is a better way to combat ignorance or deception than censorship, though we recognize that others–including those at the company, disagree.”

[via CNET]

TechCrunch is one of the leading technology blogs that has a lot of influence on venture capitalists and web startup companies alike.  Basically TechCrunch is the middleman between an up and coming web startup company and gaining enough publicity to get funding or acquired.  Being the middleman of such a powerful tool isn’t easy though.  People have tried to break into Arrington’s house to get publicity and most recently, someone at the DLD Conference in Munich, Germany spat in his face.

Arrington believes that allegations from other bloggers directed animosity at him.

“Whoever is the top blog will get attacked by everyone else and that’ll just be the way it is,” stated Arrington in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “We really need to think about, the community of bloggers, if we’re going to continue to slay our own for competitive reasons.”

Arrington believes that other bloggers allege that TechCrunch accepts payments or favors for publicity.  A couple of sites he blamed for damaging TechCrunch’s reputation for allegations includes AllThingsD.com and Valleywag, a technology gossip blog under the Gawker Media network.  Both AllThingsD co-founder Kara Swisher and Gawker founder Nick Denton personally responded to Arrington’s blame game.

“Our site is trying to raise ethical and reporting standards in the tech blogosphere but is in no way responsible for people stalking Michael Arrington. To say so is truly unfortunate on his part,” stated Swisher. “I am appalled he is being stalked, which is scary and disturbing, and am sorry for the strife it has clearly caused him and his family.”

Nick Denton stated that Arrington’s decision to step down for a month “says more about his emotional volatility than it does about anything more meaningful — like the pressures on tech journalists or Internet publishers.”  He added “Gawker titles have made many people’s lives uncomfortable, but I’ve never received a death threat.”

Arrington isn’t worried about TechCrunch’s traffic going down at all since he has many other writers maintaining the site.  Last month, TechCrunch received 650,000 unique visitors, up from 397,000 the year before.

“Did Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates or Bush take any break when they were attacked with eggs, cakes & shoes? Then why should Arrington do so,” wrote Labnol founder Amit Agarwal on his Twitter account.

I feel sympathetic for Arrington, but he was wrong for blaming his competition for the attacks on him.  Especially when TechCrunch publishes stories criticizing the livelihood of many others too.  This includes Dare Obasanjo and Ted Murphy.