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.

TechCrunch wrote a post several months ago about whether Last.fm submitted user information to the RIAA.  Last.fm denied it.  And now a new rumor has came up about how Last.fm’s parent company CBS Corporation sent information to the RIAA by tricking Last.fm.  The trick that TechCrunch claimed took place was that CBS told Last.fm that they were planning to use the information for internal uses, but sent it to the RIAA anyway.

The source behind this whole issue is an anonymous individual that spoke directly with Last.fm employees.  However Last.fm claims that no one at the company knows anything about a leak of information.  “Any request for such data would have to be approved by myself first. The suggestion that CBS’s ops team provided this data is just not possible – Last.fm operates as a separate entity and their operations staff do not have access to our system,” stated Russ Garrett, a developer at Last.fm.

paidContent published a response that CBS has made in relation to the aforementioned controvery:
“Both CBS and the RIAA have already stated quite clearly, for the record, that absolutely no individual user or listener information was supplied to the RIAA by last.fm or any division of CBS Corporation in the past, nor do we plan to do so in the future. The story posted by the website was based on an unnamed tipster. No inquiry was made to CBS or last.fm about the veracity of the anonymous source. Those who consult such blogs should be aware of the standard by which such postings are sourced and published.”

The original source TechCrunch had for the story about Last.fm sending data to the RIAA stated that the employee that leaked the information was fired.

1. Google gave us CADIE, upside down YouTube videos, and GMail autopilot.
2. TorrentFreak told us that Warner Brothers plans to acquire The Pirate Bay.
3. Arrington announced that he is looking for a date from readers and that General Mills has acquired CrunchGear.
4. CenterNetworks announced the CN51 Startup Conference.
5. SocialBlade claims they cracked the Digg algorithm.
6. The Guardian claims they are killing print version of their site and is going Twitter only.
7. Woot.com is selling a bag of crap for $3.00 and $1 million shipping.
8. Opera announced face-gestured web browsing.
9. Car and Driver is reporting that President Obama wants “a complete withdrawal from America’s premier racing series is expected to save more than $250 million between GM and Chrysler, a substantial amount considering the drastic measures being implemented elsewhere.”
10. Qualcomm stated that their convergence program has implemented tiny base stations into thousands of pigeons. They also stated that these are no ordinary pigeons but a hybrid wolfpigeon.
11. SlideShare told their users that they are Rockstars.
12. Funny or Die wrote that they have been acquired by Reba McEntire and is now called RebaOrDie.com.
13. AOL Radio was considering playing Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up all over AOLRadio.com.
14. Amazon.com launches brand new cloud computing service called Floating Amazon Cloud Environment (FACE).

More to be added as they are discovered…

These were all good, but I think out of all them, Reddit had the best April Fools prank. They replaced their entire user interface to look just like Digg as you will notice in the above screen shot.

According to a tip received at TechCrunch, Last.fm handed data over to the RIAA about their users.  Erick Schonfeld published an article regarding the tip and it was homepaged on Digg.  The rumor was Last.fm handed data to the RIAA so they could find out who listened to the leaked U2 album.  Many Last.fm executives denied the allegations in the TechCrunch blog post and Ars Technica even wrote an article that the RIAA didn’t know where that rumor came from.

“When you signup to Last.fm and scrobble what you listen to, you are trusting us with your listening data. We take this very seriously. The old-timers on Last.fm who’ve been with us since the early days can attest to this – we’ve always been very open and transparent about how your data is used. This hasn’t changed,” stated Richard Jones, a founder of Audioscrobbler.  Audioscrobbler was merged with Last.fm before it was acquired by CBS Interactive for $280 million.  “We never share personally identifiable data such as email and IP addresses. The only type of data we make available to labels and artists, other than what you see on the site, is aggregate data of listeners and number of plays.”

The blog post for Last.fm’s response was “Techcrunch are full of sh**.” It is good to see how quickly Last.fm responded to rumors like that.  TechCrunch is often times seen as a credible source for other news outlets to syndicate.  TechCrunch could really taint the images of companies, but this time the tables have turned on them.

To learn more about the PR for CBS Interactive, I recommend following Katie Gunion on Twitter.

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.

Last night, TechCrunch reported that content sites will see a 50% drop in revenue next quarter. Its sources included “content site owners” and an unnamed sales exec. No real stats were shows to back up the claim. Today, Gizmodo reported that Macworld was canceled because of Jobs’ declining health. It also got It’s information from an unnamed “reliable source.”

The problem with this kind of “reporting” is that it gets picked up and cited by main stream media at Internet speed. TechCrunch’s posts are syndicated by The Washington Post. Gawker, the owner of Gizmodo has a number of newspapers following its stories. When these large blogs report unsubstantiated rumors just to get page views, bad things happen.

Apple’s stock was shaken by Gizmodo’s rumor. And I am sure thousands of small content site owners have started to worry thanks to Arrington’s prediction.

A blogger’s “insider source” is as useless as a political analyst is to main stream media. Most political analysts have no idea what the hell they are talking about. They just speak gibberish and make claims based on absolutely nothing.

The same goes for a blog’s “inside sources.” They are supposedly authoritative people with solid information. But there is never anything to back up the information.

As far as I am concerned, Gizmodo’s Apple insider source is some clueless kid who works at an Apple Store.

[image credit:laffy4k]

Today BusinessWeek and GigaOM formed a syndication partnership.  BW will be featuring content from Om Malik’s blog network every Monday.  After hearing about this, I realized that traditional media companies need blogs like us to keep them looking cool & hip.

This hypothesis is apparent when Guardian Media, a British media company acquired paidContent for over $30 million last week.  Another example is that the Washington Post inked deals with paidContent and TechCrunch to syndicate their content.  Video blogger, Loren Feldman produces videos for CNET (now owned by CBS) on a regular basis.  And then The New York Times bought out the Freakonomics blog in August 2007.

Are traditional media companies having a hard time finding talented journalists and bloggers themselves to provide the same unique content as us?  Blogging isn’t rocket science.  I’m just blogging to make money to power my own startup ideas, pay the office rent, and learn more about the industry.  What are your thoughts?  Why does traditional media need us?

TechCrunch and Mashable are probably the two strongest names in technology news blogging today.  Both companies serve as a benchmark for many rising star technology blogs such as Pulse 2.0.  Everyday I read both blogs.  The best part of both blogs was that they each had their own style, niche & strategy that propelled them to where they are today.  But today something is happening.

Notice something in the arrows above?  Both companies used almost the same exact article title.  They’re killing each other’s originality.  Let me get into this later.  Right now I’ll tell you about the previous strategies versus the present of Mashable and TechCrunch.

Mashable’s Perceived Previous Strategy
When Mashable first started, Pete Cashmore focused solely on writing about MySpace and other social networks.  One of Cashmore’s first articles that became instantly popular was, “If You Don’t Have A MySpace, You’re a Lametard.“ 

It was a unique approach to blogging, but it worked.  Like many other entrepreneurs, Cashmore never graduated college, but he found his groove and it worked for him.  When Cashmore offered Pulse 2.0 to write for Mashable in 2006 and we said no, it was because we wanted to see how much P2 would grow.  There was mutual respect in doing that and Cashmore is a great guy. Since then P2 worked with Mashable to promote the Open Web Awards.

Mashable’s Perceived Current Strategy
Mass blog post production.  Now Mashable writes about everything happening on the Internet.  They have slipped away from their core focus from strictly social network news.  For example, one of their last articles was: ABC Launching Upgraded Video Player For Fall Season.  This has nothing to do with social networking news. 

TechCrunch’s Perceived Previous Strategy
When TechCrunch first started growing, Arrington was writing a smaller number of articles per day, but he made sure that it focused on only web start-ups and it was higher in quality.  I looked at Techcrunch’s archives from February 2006 and noticed that Michael Arrington only wrote about 61 articles that month.  All of those articles focused on startups.  When you thought of any kind of web startups, you thought of TechCrunch. 

TechCrunch’s Perceived Current Strategy:
Mass blog post production.  Within the last 22 days, TechCrunch has published over 113 articles about everything happenng on the Internet.  In the rare instances where TechCrunch writes about a startup today, it gets mixed in with tons of information that other blogs and publications have already written.  TechCrunch is shifting away from their core competency.

Consequence:
The above screen shots are the results of what happens when you attempt to be something that you are not.  You try to replicate a model to the point where you beging to think exactly the same as the other. 

Pulse 2.0 Strategy
Given the constructive criticism I’m giving to both Mashable and TechCrunch, you may ask what makes Pulse 2.0 unique from the other tech blogs?  Pulse 2.0 focuses on news, startups, social networks, funding, and whatever we feel like adding.  If I see a funny video clip created by 1938 Media, I’ll post it.  If Shan can prove that 6 volt batteries do not contain 4 AA batteries in it, he’ll publish that.  Pulse 2.0 is a thinktank. 

If you have any feedback for our current business model, I’d be happy to hear about it.

The rumor mill for a Bebo acquisition is flooding again.  TechCrunch announced today that Bebo was acquired for a rumored $1 billion.  “A high level source has told us that Bebo has been in discussions via their investment bank, Allen & Co., with a number of potential buyers, and says that the company signed a deal on Monday to be acquired,” wrote TechCrunch founder, Michael Arrington.

Arrington also followed up by saying that the second largest UK-based social network either actually signed the deal or sent out wrong messages about it.  But given the reputation of their investment bank, the latter seems unlikely.

The buyer is unknown, but there are a lot of guesses out there: Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, CBS, Viacom, Comcast, etc.  Who is your guess?  My guess is that it wasn’t Microsoft wasn’t it since they already plugged $240 million into Facebook.  Google already has Orkut, but Bebo could be their way of penetrating the European market.  Viacom could use Bebo as a means of connecting MTV watchers.   I doubt Comcast would spend $1 billion when their market cap is about $52 billion.  Yahoo! is acquiring a few companies here and there, but judging by their layoffs from earlier today, they don’t want to spend such a large amount right now.

Google seems like the most likely buyer.  Google could somehow integrate Orkut, YouTube, and Bebo together.  And that would be interesting.

Aaron Patzer had a vision in November 2005.  When using Quicken for his own personal accounting, Aaron realized that he was running through a lot of tedious work.  Patzer then started developing Mint, a Web 2.0 tool that is used for all the different forms of money management.

Today, Mint is backed by First Round Capital and previous executives from eBay, Google, Charles Schwab, and Reuters.  Josh Kopelman became a Mint Board of Director after investing into the company.  Kopelman is the founder of Half.com, which eBay bought in June 2000 for $318 million.  Mint’s current funding is $5 million.

As of tonight, Mint has another award to list as an accomplishment: the TechCrunch40 Conference 2007 winner.  The personal finance application will take home $50,000 as an award.

(more…)

Former TechCrunch UK writer, Sam Sethi is making some ambitious moves. Sethi is starting a technology blog that does not focus on U.S. companies and is called Blognation. Blognation^[1] will be focusing on web companies that are largely based in the European and Asian continent.

The problem with the idea of focusing on European website companies is that every web company has interests in making an impression in Silicon Valley. This is where practically all the venture capital firms are and where a majority of the web company acqusitions take place.

Below is a video interview of Sam Sethi talking about the launch of Blognation:
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=uMlUCoawfgg[/youtube]

Blognation has about 16 writers and include technologies that revolve on the web, mobile technologies, and enterprise software. Blognation also lists events that will take place in the aforementioned locations. The chronological upcoming events on Blognation right now are listed all the way till March 17, 2008.

In regards to Sam Sethi’s firing from TechCrunch UK, Michael Arrington wrote in his personal blog^[2]:
“Sam and I exchanged words this morning and I said he basically fired himself with that second to last post promoting his events. But nothing had been publicized and we certainly could have discussed a work around, public apology, retraction, etc. But the next thing I knew he’d posted on the blog about his dismissal. Until that happened, everything was reversible. After he took that step, the situation was no longer able to be resolved.”

Supposedly, Blognation has already raised funding from undisclosed investors. If or when Michael Arrington brings back TechCrunch UK, he may have found himself making a former employee into a rival. The intensity of rivalry could be very interesting. Arrington is pretty ruthless when it comes to competition.

[1] Blognation
[2] CrunchNotes: Putting TechCrunch UK On Hold

The TechCrunch 20 Conference website is officially live.  Sequoia Capital is sponsoring the event.  Jason Calacani and Michael Arrington are teaming up for the event.

If you’re a start-up and feel that you are ready to pitch an idea to a group of well-connected individuals such as Mark Cuban, Dave Winer, Robert Scoble, Om Malik, Chris Anderson, and Mike Arrington himself, then I suggest registering for the event.

The creation of this event was inspired by the fact that to present your start-up at the DEMO conference, it costs $15,000.  For more details, click here.

Hilary Duff, popstar/actress has announced that her pet Chihuahua, Lola now has a profile on niche social network, Dogster.com.

Dogster.com was founded by Ted Rheingold in San Francisco around January 2004. Dogster rose like a phoenix from the ashes of the out-of-business niche pet sector websites such as Pets.com. Now the website has over 275,000 accounts and 350,000 photos. Advertisers such as Disney and Holiday Inn have also targetted Dogster for promotion.

“Lola is the best, and she has such a great personality. I am excited that she is part of the Dogster community so people will get to know her, and she’ll be able to get to know all the other top dogs out there,” Duff said.

Dogster has raised $1 million in funding by several angel investors including Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch.

Duff’s dog has been featured on many magazines, made an appearance on David Letterman, and even has a character featured on Electronic Arts’ The Sims 2: Pet Edition.

Lola Duff’s profile is available at http://www.dogster.com/dogs/489342. Duff’s participation may just set off a trend for other celebrity dog owners to create profiles. Although I highly doubt Britney Spears and Paris Hilton will do the same since they are the World’s Worst Celebrity Dog Owner according to Hollywood Dog and New York Dog magazines.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CS8sItnhus[/youtube]

TechCrunch blogger, Michael Arrington announced that he was one of the investors in the social networking website for dog lovers, Dogster and its sister site, Catster. Dogster attained a round of $1 million in funding last week and is in the top 10,000 most visited websites according to Alexa.

Arrington discussed in a TechCrunch blog post that the reason why he chose to invest in Dogster, even though Dogster’s founder, Ted Rheingold does not own a pet, was because the founders were able to manage operating costs efficiently and Dogster was profitable within 2 years of its inception. Another reason why Arrington invested in Dogster was because Michael (Mukesh) Parekh joined Dogster’s Board of Directors.

Mukesh is a former partner at Goldman-Sachs and was a lead research analyst for Yahoo! and eBay’s intial public offerings (IPOs). Mukesh also has a blog called Michael Parekh on IT.

Clearly this is a smart investment by Arrington as the entrepreneurs behind Dogster and Dogster’s new management team have a solid technical background and have attracted big name advertisers. If you have a dog, I highly suggested logging onto Dogster and joining the community.