With Halloween around the corner, what better way to celebrate than to watch us animate my desiccated, lifeless limbs with jolts of fiery electricity? In this episode of Fly or Die, Erick and I look at the Compex Sport Elite. It zaps muscles to improve fitness, recovery, and general strength and it can, in a pinch, stand in for a massage. It also looks wildly freaky when turned on.

At $849 it’s a pretty hard sell but I found that it did help my shin splints and, when set to strength training mode, I noticed a definite improvement in tone. I figured the TC audience tries to stay in shape and had I had this device back when I was training for a marathon (long story), I wonder how much better my recovery would have been? Regardless, it looks hilarious when turned up to about 50.

Erick doesn’t agree with my assessment but does love watching me jump around like frog muscles sprinkled with salt.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

As Chris Dixon wraps his conversation with Thrillist co-founder and Lerer Ventures partner Ben Lerer, Lerer offers his assessment of the present day start-up environment. From his perspective it is a mixed bag. (Note: this was taped before the most recent financial meltdown)

“Since we started investing, we’ve seen a lot more money enter the market . . . so it’s tougher to be a seed stage investor because valuations are going up.”  However, Lerer continues “the advantage for us is that there is more money at the Series A stage and so more of our companies are given a chance to go on and continue.”

Dixon weighs in on the current landscape by relaying chatter he’s heard from some investors. He says, “what bothers them about the current environment is less the valuations being so high but more the fact that the time is so compressed that they have to make a decision [to invest] in three days.” Dixon’s opinion? “I think it is a mistake on both sides.”

Picking up their conversation in the video below, Dixon asks Lerer who the competition is when it comes to investing. Lerer responds that a lot of it comes from people with financial resources who are new to the tech investing game who, “throw money at it” and “don’t understand the ecosystem.” He continues with, “there are some silly checks being written.”

Make sure to watch the entire clip for additional insights, along with Part I, Part II, and Part III of this interview with Lerer, and other past episodes of Founder Stories here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Ever since Color launched its photo sharing app, the $41 million startup has been having a rough time. John Biggs and I reviewed it on Fly or Die back in March, when CEO Bill Nguyen joined us to defend the app ( you can watch that episode below, we both gave it a “die”). The company continues to struggle, so we decided to revisit our assessment in the new episode above.

Things don’t seem to be getting much better for the company. Nobody is using the app. Co-founder Peter Pham left, or was fired, according to CEO Bill Nguyen, who also told the New York Times that the company is going back to the drawing board. It might scrap its photo app altogether in favor of, well, something big and vague. According to the NYT article:

Mr. Nguyen outlined an ambitious plan to compete with Apple, Google and Facebook by tying together group messaging, recommendations and local search, all while making money through advertising.

Okay. Good luck with that.

Their first idea didn’t work. It happens. At least they still have a lot of money left to try something else. We’ve analyzed this from every angle by now. But how many do-overs do they get? Can they overcome such a spectacularly bad launch? Or is Color doomed to become the Ishtar of iPhone apps?

Watch more episodes of Fly or Die here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

An article is making its way around the net today, a letter written to Roger Ebert by an Oscar-winning editor and sound engineer, Walter Murch, decrying a fundamental flaw in 3D filmmaking that he assures us ruins the entire idea. Despite Murch’s depth of experience in the film industry, I think he’s off the mark in this assessment. So hopefully I can dispel some of the incomplete information he’s spreading (no doubt with the best intentions) via Ebert’s blog.

Murch names a few subjective complaints first: the glasses compress the movie-watching experience, the image is dark, and the everlasting complaint that you don’t need 3D to tell a good story. You didn’t need color or sound to tell a good story in the 20s, of course, or movies in the first place, but that is something that is routinely overlooked by hasty critics of 3D. His main complaint, though, is neither new nor as grave as he seems to think.

Continue reading…

Article courtesy of TechCrunch