The Hackathon Is Almost Here. Come Root For Your Favorite Hackers This Sunday!

The TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon is taking place in NYC this weekend and is shaping up to be our biggest and best yet. We’ll be hosting hundreds of hackers all weekend long. Come hang out with them. Signup now to watch their presentations in person at Pier94 in NYC on Sunday, May 22nd starting at 10:30 am! We’re thrilled to have Bradley Horowitz (Google), Amanda Peyton (MessageParty), Jeff Clavier (SoftTech), Christopher Poole (Canvas) and more helping us judge the event.  Sign up for the Sunday Demos!

Over twice the number of hackers as last year have signed up to spend the weekend prototyping new products so they can blow you away. Due to the overwhelming demand we have had to close the hacker signup form. However, if you’re a potential hacker who didn’t get a confirmation email from us and still want to hack with us this weekend just show up at Pier94 on Saturday, May 21st starting at 12:30 pm. There’s limited availability for walkup signups but we’ll do our absolute best to make sure you get in. Or you can just come to the Sunday Demos and watch the awesomeness.

Hackathon Logistics

Pier 94

Registration opens 12:30 (come fed or bring your own lunch)

Hacking opens 1:30 pm (dinner, midnight snacks, sugar and caffeine will abound)

API workshops from facebook, twitter, foursquare and others throughout the afernoon – early evening

Hacking closes 9:30 am Sunday

Hackathon presentations 10:30  am – 3 pm (Open to the community, no registration required)

Quick stats

• Hit total registered NYC 2010 numbers in 12 hours (250)

• Hit total SF registered in 24 (350)

• Over 500 hackers currently registered to participate.

We hope to be able to accommodate another 100-150 hackers with onsite registration Saturday.  Please come right @ 12:30 for onsite registration.  We’ll take as many as capacity permits.

The TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon is being organized by Tarikh Korula and Daniel Raffel on behalf of TechCrunch.

Photo credit: Flickr/eva meszaros

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Angry Birds Tops 200 Million Downloads; More Than Double Its “Crazy” Forecast (TCTV)

BERLIN– Yesterday at the Next 11 conference, I interviewed Rovio’s Mighty Eagle Peter Vesterbacka on stage. You may know him as the man who brings us all different versions of Angry Birds, Angry Birds toys, possibly an Angry Birds movie, and– as you’ll see in the clip below– an Angry Birds line of hoodies.

He has a big announcement: Angry Birds downloads have topped 200 million. To put that in perspective, another app store darling Foursquare recently reached 10 million downloads.

Of course, while the iPad and iPhone are responsible for much of Angry Birds’ success, the franchise has moved well beyond it. It has already hit five million Web downloads after last week’s Chrome announcement.

I really got an appreciation for how different Rovio thinks from other game studios yesterday. Most of us know that the team developed more than fifty games before hitting gold with the now famous birds and (as he describes them below) the somewhat misunderstood pigs. That’s often touted as an inspiration for entrepreneurs not to give up. But the flipside of it is Vesterbacka knows incredibly well how hard coming up with a blockbuster is, so he’s not committing to being in the serial blockbuster business.

Instead, he sees Angry Birds as a huge entertainment platform that is just getting started. This doesn’t just include merchandize and movies– he’s experimenting with Angry Birds oriented location based services and other schemes to blend the game’s footprint into the real world. See? That Foursquare user comparison I used at the beginning of the post wasn’t quite as random as it seemed.

We’ll be hearing a lot more from Vesterbacka this year, as his ambitious vision starts to play out. He’s particularly bullish about China– where he’s following the model of a Sanrio (ala Hello Kitty) to try to create an iconic $100 million cutesy brand in short order. Vesterbacka tentatively committed to joining the roster of global speakers at TechCrunch Disrupt in Beijing this fall, which will hopefully time up with some pretty interesting announcements for the company. Stay tuned.

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Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 With TouchWiz Caught On Video (With Bonus Keyboard Dock)

Samsung’s medium-size Galaxy Tab 8.9 is my favorite of the upcoming Android tablets, just based on its form factor and pixel density. And after seeing it on video, I’m more convinced than ever that it’s a decent machine, though I’ll have to hold it in my hands before I’m sold on the TouchWiz UI, which looks a little bit laggy in this video.

Also spotted was a new keyboard dock for the device, in shiny white and docking to the device in landscape mode:

Nobody seems to have any idea what these Russian guys are saying, but if it’s anything like our own commentary, you may as well watch it on mute and provide your own. The tablet is the star of the show, so glean what you can of the new UI and watch out for interesting things like the install of Flash 10.3 they do.

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Initial Thoughts On The Samsung Series 5 Chromebook

Google has finally made good on their promise to deliver Chrome OS to the world this summer. Or they will, on June 15 when the first Chromebooks are available. Considering that I’m potentially the perfect type of user for such a machine — that is, nearly everything I do these days is in the browser — I’ve been very interested in the OS/product development. Last week, I got my hands on one of the first models for a bit, and I thought I’d post some initial thoughts.

Following the formal unveiling on day two of Google I/O, Samsung and Google held a joint event to further show off the hardware to a group of journalists and give us some hands-on time with one of the first Chromebooks, the Samsung Series 5. I got to play with one for about 20 minutes. And while this is far from a full review, my initial impression is that it’s good. Really good. Especially for a first crack at a product.

Read more…

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WD Launches 3 TB Hard Drive Despite PC’s 2.19-TB Barrier

WD today announced the launch of its 2.5 TB and 3 TB AV-GP SATA hard drives, targeted towards AV professionals and hobbyists alike, and set to ship immediately. The 3.5-inch hard drives offer low power consumption and more storage than you’ll find on any other hard drive, which could come in handy for you AV geeks who use hard drives for storage-intensive purposes like the use of video recorders, video surveillance, single-drive media servers, and external multimedia storage.

As of now, these SATA hard drives from WD are actually too big for most computers, as drives larger than 2.19 TB are not supported by systems running Windows XP. Computers running 32-bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7, on the other hand, categorize drives larger than 2.19 TB as secondary drives. Therefore, it’s pretty important that you engage in a little due diligence and check out WD’s whitepaper before making any purchases, just to confirm that the WD AV-GP drives will work with your system.

Just to add a little perspective, the 3 TB model can hold up to approximately 600,000 photos, 230 hours of video, and 750,000 songs, according to WD’s specs page. The 2.5 and 3TB WD drives are available now for $159.99 and $179.99 respectively, and come with a three-year limited warranty.

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Lenovo ThinkPad X1: Hands-On

Despite the fact that some specs have already been leaked, we got a chance to get hands-on with the latest Think product from Lenovo and thought it was only fair that you get the complete story, too. Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 was officially announced today, and if you’ve seen the “Perfect Marriage of Form and Function” commercial, I can honestly tell you that it’s no exaggeration of the truth. This is Lenovo’s thinnest laptop to date, and possibly its most rugged.

In terms of specs, the 13-inch Lenovo ThinkPad X1 comes in two processor models: 2.5 GHz second-generation Intel Core i5-2520M and 2.1 GHz second-generation Intel Core i3-2310M, and according to Lenovo’s release, the i7 will become an option soon, too. The laptop will run Windows 7 OS, and offer a choice between the Home Premium and Professional versions with 32-bit and 64-bit options. The ThinkPad X1 measures in at 13.3 inches across, 9.1 inches in length, and from front to back, .65 inches to .84 inches thin, weighing just 3.76 pounds. Along the side, the laptop offers support for HDMI output, USB 3.0 and 2.0, a 3.5 mm headphone/mic jack, and a 4-in-1 card reader (SD, MMC, SDHC, SDXC).

And those are just the basics. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 can basically stand up to anything you put it through, within reason of course. Built from magnesium alloy with an interior roll cage, the ThinkPad X1 employs Corning Gorilla Glass, which was tested at the product launch event thrown by Lenovo. Think Product Group VP Dilip Bhatia whipped out his key chain and dragged a key across the laptop’s display, with no harm caused.

The ThinkPad X1’s keyboard is also pretty impressive. Not only did Lenovo improve the overall look and feel of this keyboard with the addition of an LED back-light, but the company also equipped it with some much-needed ruggedness. The redesigned keyboard sports a water-shedding design that keeps spills from frying the guts of your new laptop. Lenovo also got rid of the SysRq button in favor of dedicated multimedia and voice calling controls.

Lenovo has worked hard to make the ThinkPad X1 a more universal model than previous enterprise-focused products, and has done so with the addition of Dolby Home Theater v4 and a superbright high-def display. Entertainment may not be an integral part of a businessman’s day, but as Mr. Bahtia pointed out at the event, a movie always comes in handy on those long business trips.

The battery life on this bad boy isn’t all that special, offering just under 5 1/2 hours without the battery slice accessory. After popping in the slice, battery life extends to about 10 hours. But even though battery life may not be everything you’ve dreamed of, Lenovo is one step ahead, as the ThinkPad X1 features RapidCharge technology. This means that after just 30 minutes of charging, the laptop battery is charged up to 80 percent, and the user can get back to business.

All in all, this rugged little laptop will start out at $1,399, and go on sale tomorrow through Lenovo business partners or on Lenovo’s website.

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Chrome OS 12 — AKA: The Shipping Version — Hits Beta

Last week, just prior to day one of Google I/O, we noted that some updates in the Chrome OS code and forums indicated that a formal unveiling was likely very close. Sure enough, on day two of I/O, Google unveiled the first Chromebooks, the first shipping products running Chrome OS. But Google also noted that the first orders wouldn’t start until June 15, about a month away. One reason: Chrome OS still needed a tiny bit more work. And an update today brings it very close.

Google has just updated the Chrome OS beta channel to R12, aka Chrome 12. The version, which has been in the dev channel for a couple of weeks, will now be further tested in beta for a couple of weeks before it becomes the first version of Chrome OS to go stable. Expect this to happen slightly before the June 15 date.

Following Google I/O, we got some hands-on time with the first Chromebook, the Samsung Series 5. Sure enough, it was running Chrome OS version 12 (though the dev version). Representatives from Google stated that this would eventually be the build (when complete) that ships with the first Chromebooks.

So what does Chrome OS R12 contain? Well, it’s essentially Chrome 12, the browser (which is also in beta), with a number of Chrome OS-specific features. Those include:

• File browser


• Shiny new look


• Improvements to GSM support


• Verizon activation improvements


• New Flash player


• Feedback link is now under the wrench menu (“Report an issue”)


• 3G connection to the carrier fixes


• Wi-Fi connectivity/Out of the Box fixes


• New trackpad and sensitivity setting adjusted


• Auto update engine and debugging improvements


• Power optimizations


• GTalk video/chat optimizations


• Improved on screen indicators: brightness, network status, update icon

I just updated my Cr-48 to the new build and it’s feeling pretty polished (though there are still some bugs — such as with Angry Birds). Notably, it makes the trackpad feel more stable than ever. So if you have a Cr-48 and want a glimpse of what the first Chromebooks will feel like, check it out.

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