Got any nominees for the “Silicon Valley of Latin America”? If you’re like me (i.e., ignorant) you’re probably going “Um …” However, the founders of a new co-working space and “entrepreneurial center” called Espacio are aiming to make Medellin, Colombia the answer to that question.

“I grew up in Silicon Valley and New York, but even having had spent time there, I have decided to stay in Medellin because I see so much potential in this city,” says co-founder Conrad Egusa, who also notes that Medellin was one of only two Latin American locations (along with Sao Paulo) to be a finalist in a Wall Street Journal advertorial poll on the most innovative cities in the world.

To launch Espacio, Egusa (who I used to work with when we both wrote for VentureBeat) has received a grant from .CO, the company behind the .co Web domains — including, naturally, Espacio.co. He has also partnered with Founder Institute, the global incubator where he’s also a mentor.

Espacio was co-founded by a Colombian, Edinson Alberto Arrieta Aguas, and its advisors include writer and investor Alan Colmenares (another former VentureBeatnik) and entrepreneur Alex Torrenegra. (I recently wrote about Torrenegra’s startup VoiceBunny.)

Egusa says he wants to turn Espacio into “a community for entrepreneurs.” In addition to desk space, it will offer classes, demo days, marketing and PR advice, and access to a part-time, in-house designer. If you’re interested in applying, go here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Every once in a while, I’ll stumble on the Twitter account of a celebrity I admire. Once I get past my moment of “OMG, it’s Neil Gaiman!” (or whoever), I try to browse their tweets. Sometimes, the browsing ends with, “Awesome! Follow!” Other times, I’m left thinking, “God, I have no idea what’s going,” because their tweet stream is dominated by incomprehensible conversations with people I don’t know or care about.

To be fair, the scenario I described above could happen on Twitter account, not just celebrities, but it’s exacerbated on celebrity accounts, because more people are tweeting at them, and more random users are browsing their tweets. So Twitter just announced a solution — simplified profiles that hide “@” replies when you look at the profile, the same way they’re already hidden from your general stream of tweets. Apparently you’ll be able to turn this feature on and off. Judging from the screenshot above, when you’re looking at a profile, you just choose whether you want to see “all” tweets” or “no replies.”

The company says these new profiles will be rolling out to Verified Accounts (which are mostly celebrities and brands) over the next few weeks.

This could be especially important for Twitter’s more casual users. CEO Dick Costolo has said in the past that 40 percent of the service’s users don’t tweet, and he argues that’s a good thing, because it’s a sign that Twitter isn’t just for power users, but is also attracting a mainstream audience. That audience is probably going to be interested in following celebrities, but it might not have the patience to decipher their’ conversations with other users — they just want to see the updates meant for the general public.

Meanwhile, brands may also like this because they can present their messages to consumers and fans without having it interspersed with random customer service-type tweets.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The current MacBook Pro design is probably going to be around until next year, but a minor update might be on its way in the coming weeks, according to a few factors that have telegraphed this kind of thing historically. Stock is low on many models, and more importantly, a few new items have appeared in Apple inventory listings.

The K90IA, K91A, and K92A SKUs almost certainly represent a minor update to the existing K9*s that are the current MBPs. A total redesign would have a lot more fanfare, so this is probably a spec bump. All the same, hold off on purchasing if you can, since you’ll be getting more for your money shortly.

While there’s no information on what the new models will have, it’ll probably be a set of slightly better processors, a new GPU, Bluetooth 4.0, and possibly a new board to tie it all together. Nothing on the outside, and certainly no USB 3.0.

Price? No idea, but if they’re adding features it’s unlikely it’ll drop. Price drops often happen as a consolation prize when there are no real updates to a line.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Somewhere, deep within the Nintendo machine, an executive and his like-minded cohorts had a solution to the 3DS debacle. They had the answer to Nintendo’s problems. They were going to simultaneously spur sales and increase awareness. The plan involved an ingenious idea of creating new games rather than reviving old, worn-out franchises. But that didn’t happen. Instead, Nintendo is releasing another colored version of the 3DS — because that will help.

The Ice White model is set to hit the Japanese market on November 3rd for ¥15,000. That’s two weeks after the Misty Pink version launches. Nintendo has yet to announce these new models for the US but with sales faltering, they’re probably going to try all the tricks.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Android’s answer to the iPad — a software release called Honeycomb — is coming soon. Multiple tablet devices like the Motorola Xoom are on the way, and we’re probably going to see dozens of them by the end of the year. But while the OS is nearly done and Google’s apps are looking great, third party developers still have to optimize their applications for these much bigger screens. Today, Google is allowing developers to do just that: it’s released the preview version of the Android 3.0 SDK.

This is going to give us our closest look at Android 3.0, which has been demoed before, but never very throughly. Many of the new features are spelled out on the Platform Highlights page, which we’re still combing through. Here are some of the main highlights:

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

An official video promoting Android 3.0 Honeycomb has just appeared on YouTube, apparently without any accompanying fanfare from Google. It was on the Android Developers channel, but one would expect at least a blog post to show off the various nuances of the new interface. Actually, as I was writing this very paragraph, the video was taken down, so I’m guessing this was unintentional.

Good thing I downloaded the 720p version and got screenshots of all the interesting bits! We’ll have video for you momentarily, but for now, enjoy these screengrabs of Android 3.0.

Here we have the lock screen:

And the home screen; note the TechCrunch link there. Thanks for reading, Google!I’m a big fan. This is clearly the same type of desktop we saw on the Motorola unit Andy Rubin was playing with at All Things D. Nice big widgets and a four-corner layout for hot spots.

Next, moving over to another screen, this appears to be a collection of social widgets — follow your friends’ latest updates and so on.

Now, a dashboard-esque screen with all your virtual desktops displayed, and widgets to grab:

The new browser, looks slick and minimal:

The new Gmail interface Andy was demoing. If I remember correctly, this type of app should be able to be broken down to smaller widgets. Or something. Fragments, I think he said.

Google Talk interface and two-way video chat:

Google Maps, with more of the same black-and-grey theme:

Looks pretty solid, and looked nice in action. But we’ll probably get a hands-on soon, as Motorola is probably going to announce their Xoom tablet in just about an hour. We’ll update this as soon as video goes live.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Threaded emails in Gmail is a controversial subject. Some say that the automation of drawing emails together within Gmail saves them the time of figuring out which emails are connected. Others find the feature complicated. What it comes down to is either you love the way Gmail clusters conversations together, or you hate it. Today, Gmail is giving people the option to turn on threaded conversations or mute the feature completely.

Within setting, you’ll be able to toggle off conversation view to see email as individual messages in chronological order. Some actions commonly associated with unthreaded email can be accomplished with searches in Gmail.

Google says that the feature will make the transition easier for former users of ‘legacy solutions’ (i.e. Microsoft Outlook, Lotus), who aren’t used to the threaded conversation view. Now business Google Apps customers will have an “enable pre-release features” in the control panel to turn threaded conversations off.

While Google consistently provides us with small, useful features in Gmail, this is probably going to be one that many users might actually make an effort to use.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Hello and welcome. There’s coffee and cake over by the door there, help yourself. It’s here to be eaten. Bathrooms are down the hall a bit, next to where you came in. Today we’re probably going to get a full house so file on in up front here. That’s right. Everyone’s friends.

Welcome to the CrunchGear Death Grip Support Group. We are going to be telling each other stories about how horrible our iPhone 4 reception has been. We’re going to clear the air, really dig deep, and really vent. A lot of you may not even have iPhone 4s, but don’t worry. I have something for you, as well. How – and what – can you win?

Read more…

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Like a Klingon starship de-cloaking in the middle of Europe, Lars Hinrichs the founder of LinkedIn competitor XING who exited for $58 million last year is putting his efforts onto a new startup investment vehicle dubbed HackFwd. But although the web site for the new venture is packed with advisors and mentors, HackFwd will take 27% of a company it invests in – that’s a sizeable chunk. In the US, Ycombinator takes around 6% but can do anywhere from 2%-10% while TechStars take around 6-10%, whereas the London-based Seedcamp takes 8-10%. However, those latter programmes only last months, while HackFwd’s backing will be designed to last a year, a model that is probably going to suit Europe’s slower-burn markets.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The EVO 4G is a great phone with the notable drawback of its short battery life. But apparently a lot of you don’t care judging by the comments on my full review. Fine by me. Even though it doesn’t have the battery strength to make it through a day of moderate to heavy usage, there are still some serious advantages to this phone over others. Enough so that some buyers are probably going to camp out their Sprint Store this Friday. Here’s my top five favorite features so far, including a few I didn’t touch on at all in my review.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch