Bad news, guys. YouTube is shutting down.

The platform launched eight years ago, and some of us have gotten so distracted by YouTube videos that we’ve forgotten that the whole thing is actually a competition. Or, YouTube never actually mentioned that it is a competition. Either way, that competition, called YouTube, is coming to a close.

To decide who has made the best YouTube video of all time, the company has put together an expert panel of judges, complete with film critics, prolific YouTube commenters, and YouTube celebrities including Charlie from “Charlie bit my Finger” and Antoine Dodson of “Antoine Dodson News Blooper (Original).”

YouTube has over 30,000 technicians working tirelessly to narrow down all the YouTube submissions that have come in over the past eight years. The judges will then spend the next decade discussing which video should ultimately win.

Tonight, at midnight, the site will be shut down and all of its content will be permanently deleted. YouTube won’t be ressurected until 2023, at which point the only video on the site will be the winner of this competition. That said, the winner won’t be chosen for another decade, but you can watch the first 12 hours of judging live-streamed from YouTube’s LA offices tomorrow.

Talk about slow and steady, right? Will people in 2023 remember YouTube?

Luckily, of the 150,000 submissions viewed by the judges, none of them are judged by popularity. Gangnam Style has the same chance of winning as this.

The winner will get an MP3 player and a $500 creative stipend for their next creative project.

Reactions to this news should be interesting. YouTube is one of Google’s most successful and valuable properties, and it’s a global necessity in terms of easy, made-for-everyone video sharing online. However, Google has been spring cleaning lately, removing Reader and a handful of other products from its portfolio.

Perhaps this is yet another step in streamlining its offerings.

OR, April Fools apparently happens one day early in Mountain View.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Happy – almost – holidays! As you may have noticed, we have already started our ever-popular TC Gift Guide to highlight some of the best gifts this year.

Since Thanksgiving is next week (time really does fly by) we wanted to give something away we think many people would love to have – a brand new iRobot Roomba 650 Vacuum Cleaning Robot. These things clean your carpet, tile, basically anything and everything on the floor with a push of a button. Plus it’s a robot.

The Roomba 650 is valued at $399.99. John Biggs swears by them and with three kids, you can trust he means it. Want one for the holidays? We are giving a free one away to one lucky winner. If you want to enter, all you have to do is follow the steps below. The giveaway starts now and ends next Monday at 7:30pm PT. We will contact the winner once the giveaway is over.

To enter:

1) Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page:

2) Then do one of the following:

- Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TechCrunch hashtag)
- Or leave us a comment below telling us what you’re most excited about for the holidays

Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will make sure you follow the steps above and choose our winner Monday night. Anyone in the world is eligible.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Whoa! That was quite a response. TechCrunch got 445 entries to our Disrupt Remix Contest. Check them all out below. After many hours of music screening, our busy Event Director Joey Hinson has chosen a winner. It was a difficult pick because so many were so good. But, now we are proud to announce the winner. Drumroll please. It’s Natasha Bryant-Raible, with her “TechTechRastaCrunch” remix. She gets 2 free tickets to attend Disrupt SF next week and a free Pro SoundCloud account.

Here’s her remix, that will also be played during Disrupt.

In addition to creating our catchy music, our partners Smith & Keats provided individual audio loops based on the full compositions, so our mixers would have more options.

You can find all the contest entries here.

A very large number of the tracks came via Songster, a Facebook game that lets anyone create great sounding mixes. Marshall Seese, the founder and CEO of Mowgligames.com, which makes Songster, read about our contest. He asked if he could make our tracks their “free song pack of the week” and we said “sure.”

Seese told us he “developed Songster so that anyone, regardless of musical talent, could feel the creative thrill of making their own song. When we saw that TechCrunch was hosting a remix contest, we wanted to help open it up to the masses by using our technology to drive many more remix submissions than would otherwise been possible.” And it sure did.

While we didn’t know this when we picked our winner, Natasha works at Mowgli and does a lot of DJing on the side.

Here’s all our original tracks from Smith & Keats, including some new ones making their official debut next week:

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the contest.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

We have one more free ticket left to give away to a lucky fan who wants to come to Disrupt SF with us! We just announced a big surprise — Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

Mark will be joining our all-star speaker list which now includes: TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, MG Siegler, Jason Kincaid, Marc Benioff, Jessica Alba, Brian Lee, Dave Morin, Brit Morin, Vinod Khosla, Ron Conway, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, Marissa Mayer, Roelof Botha, Dana Brunetti, Tony Conrad, Jack Dorsey, Reid Hoffman, Ben Horowitz, Chris Kelly, Aileen Lee, and so many more. Seriously, just like people have been saying, this is going to be the Coachella of tech. Check out the full list of speakers here and our full agenda here.

Not only will the winner of this giveaway win a free ticket to Disrupt SF, they will also win a free Kindle we recently received. We asked what we should do with it and you all said to give it away, so the Kindle and the ticket will go to one lucky person who enters below.

1) Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page:

2) Then do one of the following:

- Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TCDisrupt hashtag)
- Or leave us a comment below telling us why you should win

The contest will start now and end tomorrow, September 4th at 7:30pm PT. Yes that’s only one day, so be sure to enter quickly.

Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will make sure you follow the steps above and choose our winner tomorrow night. Anyone in the world is eligible. Please note the ticket is for one ticket only and does not include airfare or hotel.

If you are interested in coming to Disrupt SF, you can purchase tickets here.

If you would like to join us as a sponsor, opportunities can be found here.

Good luck!

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The jury is still out — literally — on the Apple v. Samsung court case, in which Apple has accused Samsung of copying the iPhone and the iPad designs with its Android-powered mobile devices. While we wait for the verdict to come in (some experts say the jury’s deliberations could very well end before this week is up) to shed a bit of light on what’s at stake here we talked to Christopher Marlett, the founder and CEO of MDB Capital, a Los Angeles-based investment bank that focuses on intellectual property.

Watch the video above to hear Martell talk about why Apple v. Samsung is such a unique case in the grand scheme of IP disputes, why he believes patents actually help foster innovation, how Apple could likely end up being as the winner, and more.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Hey everyone, we have a special giveaway for you this week. Yes, the iPad 3 is well on it’s way, but the iPad 2 is still one of the most sought after gadgets out there. With special thanks to our friends over at GreatApps.com, we have a brand new black iPad 2 32G to give away, ALONG with a Hip Street iPad 2 Bluetooth Keyboard Case, PLUS a $200 iTunes gift card. The lucky winner of this giveaway will win all three items.

The giveaway will run for three days, starting now and ending this Sunday, at 7:30pm PT. Make sure you follow the steps below if you’d like to enter.

1) Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page:

2) Then do one of the following:

- Retweet this post (including the #TechCrunch hashtag)
- Or leave us a comment below telling us why you want these prizes

The contest starts now and ends Sunday, February 26th, at 7:30pm PT. We’ll go through all of the comments and make sure you followed the steps correctly before picking our winner. We’ll choose the winner at random and contact them this weekend. Make sure you only tweet the message once, or you will unfortunately be disqualified.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Our very own Greg Kumparak and Jason Kincaid have both reviewed one — both giving it positive reviews. It’s the first time Greg has been excited about Android from a software standpoint in a while, and Jason thinks it is going to be really big. With special thanks to Appitalism, we have one Samsung Galaxy Nexus to give away.

First off, not only is the winner of this giveaway receiving a brand new Samsung Galaxy Nexus as soon as it’s released, but the winner will also receive a $500 app download card from Appitalism and Beats headphones by Dr. Dre Headphones. Obviously, in light of the holiday spirit, we wanted this giveaway to be big.

If you want a chance at winning this Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the $500 app download card from Appitalism, plus the Beats headphones by Dr. Dre Headphones, all you have to do is follow the steps below!

1) “Like” our TechCrunch Facebook Page:

2) Then do one of the following:

- Retweet this post (including the #TechCrunch hashtag)
- Or leave us a comment below telling us what excites you the most about this new phone

The contest starts now and ends Saturday, December 3rd, at 7:30pm PT.

Make sure you only tweet the message once, or you will be disqualified. We’ll choose the winner at random and contact them over the weekend. This giveaway is for U.S. only.

Good luck everyone.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Last week we ran a giveaway for one whole week, giving away a DROID Bionic. A huge congratulations to Scott Leither for winning last week’s DROID Bionic! Since the giveaway was so popular, we wanted to give all of you another shot. Thanks again to Verizon, we are giving one more DROID Bionic away to one lucky reader. Just like before, the giveaway will run for one full week and we will choose the winner next Friday.

To enter, all you have to do is follow the steps below:

1) Click on this link to sign up.

2) Then do one of the following:

- Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TechCrunch hashtag)
- Leave us a comment below telling us why you want it

The giveaway starts now and ends next Friday, October 7th, at 1pm PDT.

We will pick one lucky reader at random and contact them via email next week. Anyone in the U.S. is eligible.

Good luck everyone!

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Red Bull gives you wings, right? Well, apparently it also gives 16 teams the energy necessary to build brand new and quite random inventions as a part of Red Bull’s annual Red Bull Creation event. In a nutshell, Red Bull throws out a secret theme at the very beginning of the weekend and teams are asked to create gizmos and gadgets that exemplify that theme, all in a matter of 72 hours.

This year, it was “Energy In Motion,” and that’s exactly what we saw there. From spinning see-saws to a “WPV” (wedgie-powered vehicle), imagination was certainly not lacking at McCarren Park in Brooklyn yesterday.

It would be almost stupid to try and describe what we saw there without images:

Maker: Innovative Thirst
Creation: A clay-powered mobile pod with suspended electricity-generating swing set.

Maker: NYC Resistor
Creation: A steam-powered off-road trolley car, with a nice bronze-style finish.

Maker: Hack RVA
Creation: A hacked up shopping cart that does its own hardcore poppa-wheelies, fittingly named the Wheelie Mobile.

Maker: Donner Party 2.0
Creation: A electric hybrid tricycle fitted with a dryer that also works as a humongous blender. Strawberry daiquiris anyone?

Maker: Team Doublewide
Creation: A robot called “The Amazing Cyclo.” Think Johnny 5, but as a puppet, with an LCD face and a single wheel made of shoes for a foot. And a remote control, of course.

“Team Award” Winner: Techshop
Creation: A spinning see-saw that lifts riders 12 feet in the air, while an accelerometer waits for the perfect moment to trigger an attached Polaroid camera, ultimately grabbing amusement-park-style candids of the riders’ faces.

Drum roll please! And the winner is…

Maker: 1.21 Jigawatts
Creation: Alright, this one’s a bit more difficult to explain. Basically, 1.21 Jigawatts wired an enormous wooden hamster wheel into a wireless network and gave it its own phone number. According to its maker, the massive wireless wheel could receive up to 60,000 one-word text messages at the same time, and then print out the texts on the pavement by rolling along the ground. In all honesty, the only purpose of this contraption is to make people stop in their tracks, drop their jaw, and stare. Obviously, that’s exactly what 1.21 Jigawatts created: a show-stopper.

Team Award winner Techshop went home with a brand new Makerbot 3D Printer, which creates little 3D sculptures from a scanned images (pictured below). 1.21 Jigawatts, Red Bull Creation’s grand prize winner, left the show with $5,000 and four 40W Hobby Laser Cutters.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Whether it’s an altruistic push to give back to and interact with their fans or to just drum up publicity for their brands, it seems that a number of well-known musicians, artists, and creatives are turning to Talenthouse to get inspiration for their projects from everyday web users like you and me.

These crowdsourced projects tend to range across the board: Soundgarden (I had no idea they were still touring, either) used Talenthouse to search for a photographer to take their glamor shots as they traveled around the world, Comic book guru Stan Lee asked his fans to help him create a new superhero, and rapper The Game is asking his fans to help him write a verse for a new track — and more.

Talenthouse, which went live at the end of 2009, is a startup that specializes in getting big names to find not-so-famous, but equally-as-talented collaborators through global social media competitions. Essentially, you can think of these projects as speedy, micro online versions of American Idol or X Factor, except the winner actually collaborates with the talent.

So, in practice, the startups posts these trumped-up, multimedia craigslist listings, or invitations, that are announced through the company’s website and Facebook page. If the contest (or invitation) is to write a verse, for instance, you then drop your hot rhymes into Talenthouse’s digital form and submit. Once the submission period is over, users vote on their favorite ideas, and the winner gets to collaborate with the stars. This voting takes place through Facebook (different from Facebook likes), Twitter, and Talenthouse’s distributed cloud architecture — all of which is proprietary technology developed by the startup itself.

As another illustration, X-Men and Rush Hour film director Brett Ratner, today launched his own series of crowdsourcing projects, in which he’s casting for an assistant director, a walk-on part for an upcoming production, somebody to design his company’s animated logo, as well as an assistant on a magazine photo shoot.

And because Talenthouse runs a distributed platform approach built for reach and engagement, projects like Ratner’s can live on talenthouse.com as well as on host pages, media partner pages, Facebook fan pages and blogs.

On a quick TechCrunch-related note, as you may remember, TC’s own Erick Schonfeld was memorialized in a meme following TechCrunch Disrupt SF last year, when he rocked out on stage with none other than MC Hammer. (You can see the results to the left.) And it’s now come to light that this is not the first time. So this would be the perfect place to introduce the early-nineties version of dancingerick, who it seems made his professional dancing debut in a Brett Ratner music video. R&B and Dick Clark are both involved. Check it out here, especially starting at 30 seconds. Awesome.

For more on Talenthouse collaborations, watch Ratner’s video below:

Article courtesy of TechCrunch