Andrew Mason must be some kind of spirit animal of optimism. We assumed he was kidding when today he wrote that he had recorded “a seven song album of motivational business music”. Just three months ago the founder and CEO got booted from Groupon. But we’ve just confirmed with him that his album “Hardly Workin’” is for real. Hold on to your ear holes, startup people.

Mason gave the world an update on what he’s been up to since he cashed in his voucher for an escort to the guillotine from Groupon. He’s been galavanting around the world, losing weight, will become a part-time partner at Y Combinator, and plans to start a company with the best of his bottled-up ideas from the last seven years.

But none of that is nearly important as his initiative to inspire the youth of America. He writes (with two spaces after each period [dude, no!]), that:

“I managed over 12,000 people at Groupon, most under the age of 25.  One thing that surprised me was that many would arrive at orientation with minimal understanding of basic business wisdom.  ”Haven’t you read any business books?  Good to Great? Winning? The One Minute Manager?” I’d ask.  ”Business books? Not really our thing,” was the typical response. I came to realize that there was a real need to present business wisdom in a format that is more accessible to the younger generation.”

So release an ebook series? Go on a campus speaking tour? Nope. He hit the music studio to create what we could only imagine sounds like Bob Dylan meets Tony Robbins meets Metallica. We’ve spoken directly to Mason and he says the album is real, not a stunt like quite a few things past. For instance, Grouspawn, or when he said he was voluntarily leaving Groupon to spend more time with his family. Andrew did major in music at Northwestern, after all.

 ”I spent a week in LA earlier this month recording Hardly Workin’, a seven song album of motivational business music targeted at people newly entering the workforce.  These songs will help young people understand some of the ideas that I’ve found to be a key part of becoming a productive and effective employee.  I’m really happy with the results and look forward to sharing them as soon as I figure out how to load music onto iTunes, hopefully in the next few weeks.”

I’ll be camped outside of iTunes waiting for the release if we can’t get a review copy first. In the meantime I’ve made him some mock-up album covers. Whenever we do get our hands on Hardly Workin’, expect a listening party at the TechCrunch San Francisco office. I’ll even livestream it if Mason will let me.

I’ve said before that inventors are the new rockstars. This is absolutely what I meant.

[Image Credit: Martin Schoeller]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Meet the PR2 personal robot from Willow Garage. The human-sized bot can learn to fold clothes and do other activities via voice commands, and it can even get into sword fights. Watch as I challenge the PR2 to a lightsaber duel today at Google I/O, and learn how Willow Garage could help anyone run their own experiments with robots.

While it might look like the PR2 is just for fun and games, it’s actually designed for universities. Willow Garage sells the PR2 to schools and provides the ROSS open-sourced operating system for controlling it. This way Ph.D. students don’t have to waste time building a crummy robot of their own, and instead can run their experiments on a powerful, reliable learning machine.

And seriously, this thing is powerful. It’s got two lasers, a 5-megapixel camera, and an Xbox Kinect for vision, two pairs of stereo cameras for depth perception, a telescoping spine and seven-degrees-of-freedom arms for movement, and wheels that can propel it at one meter per second.

Willow Garage and the PR2 could democratize robotics and turn us all into tinkerers. Be sure to watch the video to see the PR2 cut me down like a true Sith Lord, as well as perform less evil operations.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Are you ready for Donald Trump to (not really) give you (not real) money for your (not really) amazing project? Well, (not really his) new site, FundAnything, is ready to take your money!

The new funding site is (not really) run by Trump (it is really headed up by the Bill Zanker, founder of the Trump-infested Learning Annex) but darn it if it doesn’t look like the Donald won’t give you cash if you ask him nice!

People do not assume this but more than anything else, I like helping people. Be at Trump Tower at 11 AM today.—
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 08, 2013

The site began its life/death cycle today with typical Trump flair. This morning the Trumpster tweeted that he was about give out loads of cash on the street because, presumably, he has nothing better to do on a Wednesday. However, he is really giving out money to pre-selected people and some folks pulled from the crowd. Arguably, his attempts at charity, though mendacious and baldly noble, are noble. From the press release:

The rules are sufficiently abstract but similar to Indiegogos, at least in spirit. FundAnything charges a 9% fee on the contributions you collect if your project isn’t fully funded. It takes 5% on projects that are funded. There’s also a processing fee of 3%.

Will FundAnything be successful? Well, considering they’ve overtly borrowed the site design of the two leading platforms, Indiegogo and Kickstarter, and, more importantly, have a big picture of Donald Trump on the front page I seriously doubt success is in the cards. Startups that hire “stars” to flog their launches are usually the worst kind of startups simply because this suggests a level of self-regard and showmanship that turns off early adopters and draws all the wrong kind of customers. I could, for example, imagine FundAnything attempting a TV campaign based on the premise that Trump will fund your stuff. Those suckered into the site will slowly realize that Trump, like a dark, necrotic god, is powerless to help them.

Until they shutter this mess, stare into his eyes, mortals, and weep. He is Trump, avatar of Mammon. All hail!

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

No app has ever broken my heart quite like Vine, Twitter’s six-second animation maker. You capture a scene, then pocket your phone while you think of a witty way to describe. But when you open it a few minutes later or the app randomly crashes, it’s gone. That moment, that memory, deleted. I still love Vine, but I’ll never forgive it for the visions it stole from me.

Essentially, if you record a Vine but then close the app and don’t share it right away from the screen where you choose a description plus what social networks to share to, the video deletes itself.

If you’re lucky, when you open Vine to the horror of the homescreen instead of your art in the composer, Vine will have saved your deleted animation as a video clip to your camera roll. But you’re not allowed to import videos, you have to shoot them in the app. That video clip is no Vine, it’s a shadow, one that can’t be easily shared. And often there’s no clip saved. I’d say the app has eaten about about half of the Vines I’ve ever shot.

This whole situation is just one of Vine’s many flaws. It deserves some slack as its just four months old and only on version 1.0.7. Still, Vines frequently fail to upload, randomly refuse to load in the feed, there’s no way to share privately, and it crashes all the time taking your current Vine to hell with it.

It’s when Vines disintegrate that I get truly angry, though. It’s blatant violation of the implicit value exchange between a human and an app. Rather than live a moment, I recorded it. When I ended up with nothing to show for it, I feel cheated. It makes me weary to reach for my phone when I see something beautiful.

Maybe that’s a good thing. The fact that we have trouble simply experiencing beauty, joy, or spectacle if we don’t make a permanent, dumbed-down copy of it is a bit sad. But if I make the conscious decision to trade now for forever, I damn well better get my forever. And now when I use the app, there’s a deep seeded fear that my creation will vanish, with or without a trace. This isn’t Snapchat. Your content isn’t supposed to disappear.

The fact that Vine was the #1 free app in the App Store two weeks ago despite its shortcomings is a testament to its brilliant concept and responsive design. But listen ye Vine developers who frequently shun press requests: “Fix this. Save any Vine we’ve finished shooting as a draft. Earn our trust. Because apps aren’t supposed to make you feel such a profound sense of loss. There’s plenty of that in real life.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

“Success Theater” means only sharing an idealized version of yourself where you’re always happy. Now a bug in Facebook’s new mood sharing feature is taking that concept way too literally. Select that you’re “Unhappy” and Facebook adds a smiley face to your post instead of a frown emoticon. [Update: Facebook apparently saw this and has since fixed the bug.]

Alas, these little fumbles are the price you pay for reduced bureaucracy and Facebook’s “Move Fast And Break Things” culture.

Overall I still think the mood sharing feature which is currently available to US users has the potential to make us less shy and more expressive. Some people just aren’t comfortable talking about their feelings, but maybe would be willing to select them from a drop-down menu. Meanwhile, structured data about our mood could let Facebook serve us ads for concerts when we’re happy and food delivery when we’re sad.

Our inner most thoughts and emotions are a sensitive subject, though. If you didn’t notice the incorrect face you could share a pretty awkward update of a smile about some tragedy. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

An indie band relying on crowd-sourcing is nothing new; many a tour bus has been paid for by way of things like Kickstarter or Indiegogo. But a band asking for your mouse cursor, instead of your money? Thats a new one.

Dutch rock band lightlight has tapped the power of the crowd along with a rather impressive hack to make what might be the cleverest* music video the world has ever seen.

Each time the video is played, they’re using a crafty bit of Javascript to capture the position of the viewer’s mouse cursor in real time. Throughout the video, the viewer back at home is encouraged to interact with the contents — drawing a smiley, keeping your cursor in a certain region, etc. Every 30-60 minutes, they re-release the video, now recomposed with the recordings of the most recent viewers.

You can check out the video for yourself right here. (NSFW Heads Up: There’s a fair amount of bare skin in the video, though it’s (usually) covered up by a few thousand mouse cursors. If cursor bikinis are grounds for a firin’ where you work, save this one for later.)

I dug around a bit, and it seems that the video/tech itself is the work of Dutch artist Roel Wouters and his studio, Moniker.

The video started making the rounds yesterday morning, but I held off in posting it in light of yesterday’s attack. Some twenty or so hours later it’s still rockin’ my world, so up goes the post! (If you’ve already seen it by now, a bit of a bonus for the second go-round: keep your eyes on your browser’s Javascript console [In Chrome that's: View > Developer > Javascript Console] for an easter egg.)

[* "Cleverest" here not necessarily meaning "best". Everyone knows that Jamiroquai's Virtual Insanity is the best video of all time.]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

PETMAN is a humanoid robot made by Boston Robotics. BR also created Big Dog, the quadrupedal, brick-throwing robot that haunts our dreams.

This robot, shown here gussied up in a hazmat suit and gas mask, however, is far scarier. While I doubt he can do much right now without those cable support, just imagine PETMAN bopping up to you on a mission to keep you from entered a contaminated zone. First, he looks surprisingly life-like in this outfit and, second, he would be completely deaf to your entreaties. As they say, we’re living in the future. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.

Plus, PETMAN can dance.

via Giz

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Sim City, EA’s beleaguered sim game that, for a time, was probably the most cursed title in the blogosphere, now allows players to place Nissan-branded® solar® recharging® stations® in their cities®. The cha®ging stations add a boost of happiness® to surrounding homes and businesses. You can download it here for free. (All Rights Reserved, While Supplies Last)

The game piece, mentioned in a forum post, is an excellent bit of sponsored wonkery complete with plenty of Nissan® LEAF® trademarks™ and and a promise that the station® will be available for download for six months®.

While most players won’t notice the station let alone install it, this is a clear case of EA’s business development division steamrolling ahead with its plans as if the Sim City DRM issues never happened.

Sponsored content in a game is nothing new and this isn’t particularly egregious. However, classic games rarely need to resort to overt advertising to make back a potentially massive investment. A little product placement never hurt anyone, obviously, but rising the ire of cranky gamers is not something EA wants to do right now. Or maybe it is.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

He might not be bulletproof, but simultaneously running Twitter and Square qualifies Jack Dorsey as a superhero. This week a new unauthorized comic book about him was released, called “Jack Dorsey: Co-Founder of Twitter #1″. Check out these page scans posted by Comic Book Resources that preview his quest to recover stolen quantum networking technology.

In the first issue from BlueWater Productions now available on Kindle, Dorsey hunts for the kidnapped inventor of the futuristic computer chip that could power “the Internet’s next evolution.” Along the way are plenty of cheesy, dumbed-down references to how Twitter and Square are changing the world.

There are also some subtle references to Jack’s quirky personality, like his preference for taking the bus, plus a goofy scene where he mind-melds with a bison. Oh, and he battles a robot spider.

Dorsey isn’t the only tech superstar immortalized in a graphic novel. BlueWater has also made comic books about Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Google co-founders Larry and Sergey. It all might seem ridiculous, but who would you rather have kids looking up to? Fictional caped crusaders? Or real inventors and entrepreneurs?

Images via Comic Book Resources.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

I love you Spotify, but you’re freaking me out. Today you showed off your first television commercial. It’s supposed to introduce the mainstream world to the wonder of listening to almost any song ever on demand. Yet with a useful product to sell and all the emotional resonance of music to lean on, the ad comes off vague, haunting, and devoid of soul. So much so I could help but parody it.

The commercial is called “For Music”. Your first sign that your ad agency Droga5 sh*t the bed was that there is essentially none. No music in the minute-long spot. Nothing to excite or remind us how thrilling music discovery can be. Just a long, dreary drone.

The visual language isn’t much better. A anonymized man crowdsurfing in the dark over an endless sea of throbbing humanity. It’s enough to trigger claustrophobic nightmares. Also, if you’ve ever had someone dropped on your head while you’re trying to watch your favorite band’s encore, you too will think of crowdsurfers as selfish distractions more than some symbol of liberty.

Then there’s the hollow voice-over. “Why can a song change the world? Because music is a force, for good, for change, for whatever. It’s bigger than us. It lives inside us.” Seriously, Spotify? Your mission to democratize access to music deserves better than this trite nonsense.

And anyone seeing this ad as their first taste of Spotify deserves better too. Congratulations, you didn’t trot out a geeky feature list. But perhaps communicating that you can search for any song and listen to it in full for free would have piqued people’s interest a little better. You’re not Facebook, and you don’t get to have a weird, artsy “Chairs are like Facebook” commercial. Many people have no idea what Spotify is. And I’d bet that after watching your ad tonight during The Voice or whenever else, they still won’t, other than that you have something to do with music.

Or maybe zombies. That’s all I could think about while watching “For Music”. Droga5 has produced memorable spots for Puma, and even made Prudential insurance seem inspiring, so this is atypically terrible. The two additional commercials it made for you, “Her Song” and “Getting Weird”, are only little stronger. Still too subtle and lacking emotion, but at least they don’t conjure visions of the apocalypse.

Which is why I made this parody. Think of it as the internal monologue of what someone unfamiliar with Spotify might assume “For Music” was about. Again, this criticism comes from a place of love. Maybe next time an Internet company makes their television debut, they’ll keep it simple. Just tug our heartstrings and show us what you solve.

[Image Credit: Xcitefun / Michael Jackson]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch