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The TechCrunch Japan TokyoCamp 2009, a demo event for web startups that took place this Friday, was a total blast. No less than 350 people came to the demo pit and meetup, which were co-organized by DESIGN IT!, LLC (a Sociomedia group company that runs TechCrunch Japan) and Nikkei Digital Core (a community under the umbrella of the Nikkei, Japan’s biggest business publication).

This time, TokyoCam...

Executives from Tudou—one of two companies left fighting it out to be the YouTube of China—were in San Francisco earlier this week to meet with investors and do a little schmoozing.

I met up with CEO Gary Wang and COO Sam Lai, who already raised some $85 million from Granite Global Ventures and General Catalyst Partners, and they swore they weren’t here trying to raise more cash. That’s a bit of a...

I’d probably feel slightly smug, if I didn’t feel so sick.

Smug that after two weeks of me suggesting that social media might not be an unequivocally Good Thing in terms of privacy and human decency, the news has delivered the perfect example to support my view.

Unfortunately it’s hard to feel smug – hard to feel anything but sadness and nausea – when thirteen innocent people are dead.

I’m talking...

Just five days ago Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said mobile subscriptions, among other scammy offers, would be removed from Zynga’s popular Facebook and MySpace games. “We have also removed all mobile ads until we see any that offer clear user value,” he said.

So we were surprised yesterday to see a screen shot clearly showing a mobile subscription ad in a post on InsideSocialGames about the launch of a ...

Yesterday I detailed my quest to find the throngs of Droid fans who had woken up at the crack of dawn to grab a place in line before Verizon unleashed the phone to the masses. Yet despite reports of lines elsewhere, I failed — the Verizon store in Palo Alto was a ghost town, as was the Best Buy down the street. Some commenters took my story and similar reports as an indication that the Droid’s l...

Last month, Apple rejected the Someecards iPhone app because it contained satirical comedy about public figures. After attempting to make their case and getting stonewalled, Someecards eventually gave into Apple and removed the offending cards which made fun of Hitler and Roman Polanski, among others. Apple swiftly approved the app and all was well.

Well, not exactly.

Apparently, Apple contacted S...

Last week, Apple released its new 3.0 software for the Apple TV. Unfortunately, it looks like it came with a pretty big bug in tow: Disappearing content.

Here’s the problem in Apple’s words:

There is an issue with Apple TV software version 3.0 that can possibly cause your content to disappear after a period of time. All customers running Apple TV software version 3.0 should immediately restart th...

Earlier this week the domain name industry was rocked by a shill bidding scandal at SnapNames. The company made the right early moves by admitting the problem and promising refunds, plus interest, to customers. Now, though, they are forcing customers to release them from liability to get the refund. We think this this is a mistake.

SnapNames acquires expiring domain names from registries and then...

As we prepare for our next RealTime CrunchUp on November 20th in San Francisco, we're seeing if anything an acceleration of the phenomenon known as RealTime. Startups, cloud platform vendors, the open standards community, and virtually every software and hardware category are being refreshed and reinvented in the new model. And while there are many familiar players talking and to some degree walki...

The dawn of the 21st century brought us a problem: we had lots of data, but no real way to bring that data into the real world. We could feasibly lug laptops and phones around, but did they ever do exactly what we needed them to do? Don’t answer that. Manufacturers, in their wisdom, decided to do something about it and so devices like the Peek - for email - and the CueCat - for nothing - were bor...

Being a blogger, I often find design elements on the web for my posts or my blog in general. It’s becoming a very common experience for bloggers to know a thing or two about web design. I’m guessing it is the web that taught us to be quasi-designers by offering us lots of easy-to-use tools that help us create just about everything we need: photo-editing, widgets, logos, buttons, and yes, fonts as ...

Now that they got what they wanted – a renewed stake and board representation in the Skype that will be spun off eBay soon – the Scandinavian duo Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis can divert more of their attention again to the latest Internet venture they’re putting their weight behind: Rdio. The yet-to-launch digital music startup was first talked about publicly a couple of weeks ago when the

I’m in India this weekend with fellow TechCrunch/BusinessWeek writer Sarah Lacy. After we’re done with the elephant rides in Jaipur, we’re going to be meeting local tech startups. Then we head back to New Delhi to meet more aspiring entrepreneurs. Sarah is writing a book on how startup culture has gone global and I’m researching how R&D has globalized. It never ceases to amaze me how you can find brilliant entrepreneurs everywhere—whether in the middle of the Thar Desert in Rajasthan or Santiago Chile (where local entrepreneurs showed me life-sized holographic images projected through some hardware connected to their laptops, and software which can help monitor the operational efficiencies of department stores in California). The promise of these early ventures is always amazing and their enthusiasm infectious. Which brings me to Global Entrepreneurship Week. And Snoop Dogg.

You are probably asking yourself, what the heck does the controversial and highly successful rapper have to do with entrepreneurship? Snoop has graciously agreed to serve on a Nov. 16 mentoring panel that features high-powered entrepreneurs handing out sage advice on how they launched and grew their businesses and brands. No doubt, Snoop has built one of the most durable brands in the notoriously volatile world of hip-hop. In fact, I’d wager that Snoop could give some solid lessons to some of the top decision makers and brand masters on a global basis. The panel is but one of a huge slate of events arranged by the Kauffman Foundation (full disclosure — they have underwritten some of my research) for Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Those events span the globe, running in 85 countries and hundreds of venues all with a singular goal—to spur innovative thinkers to do innovative things. The emphasis of many of the events, not surprisingly, is technology. The events are designed to teach, inspire, and foster collaboration among entrepreneurs (many of whom may not even know they are entrepreneurs yet). Aside from getting some sage advice from the original Snoop, the week is also chock full of opportunities for entrepreneurs of every type. Got a great idea to join the clean tech revolution? During Global Entrepreneurship Week in San Francisco, the Clean Tech Open Ideas Competition finals will be held. In this competition, thousands of people submitted early-stage clean technology ideas and it helps turn them into successful companies. Ideas can cover anything that fosters a healthy natural environment, from big-think solar breakthroughs to power-management software for buildings or hotels. Just like the TechCrunch50, this bakeoff will let people with big ideas present in front of a high-powered panel of experts and vie for startup-funding and other assistance.

While a lot of the events are in the U.S., the spread beyond our shores is notable and accelerating. Take “Speednetwork the Globe”. This is a series of networking events where entrepreneurs of all backgrounds can meet with potential collaborators, mentors and investors in five-minute increments. More than 500 speednetworking events in 31 countries happened in 2008, connecting approximately 25,000 people. Likely even more will be scheduled this year and this is a model for how to get geeks and suits—the two key components of a tech startup—together and brainstorming.

A quick look through the list showed me that pretty much anywhere I go I can find some event worth hitting. On November 18 in Chile (which I wrote about previously as being a rising comer in the tech world) the government-backed Foro Innovacion (Innovation Forum) will hold an all day business plan ideathon competition, focused on technology industries. In Tokyo, on November 14 the Honda Foundation is sponsoring a seminar addressing the needs and challenges of social entrepreneurs in Asia.

That last event I put in for a reason. Enterpreneurship, I strongly believe, is not just about making money. In much of the world, entrepreneurship is about giving people control over their own fate, lifting them out of poverty, and improving the world. Even here, in the U.S., entrepreneurship is an incredible social resource. All meaningful job growth over the past few decades has come from start-ups and entrepreneurial businesses that are small in size but powerful in impact. The latest economic crisis and wave after wave of resulting layoffs has clearly illustrated there is no safety in working for a big company, or having the right kind of degree, or even being a productive employee.

This is the core of entrepreneurship, the ability to lift yourself up by your own bootstraps, no matter the circumstances, and create a business and a way to support yourself, your family and your community. Most of you reading this either are entrepreneurs or have entrepreneurial aspirations. I’m saying, that’s great. You are what has made this country an amazing place, and these types of motivations are what has lifted tens of millions of people out of poverty around the world. So pay attention to Global Entrepreneurship week, mark it on your calendar, and attend an event if you can. Next time around, organize an event in your area. And never forget why you are doing what you do.

Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa.

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The ads are destroying YouTube. At least this one is. It is a video ad for sustainable energy company from Spain called Acciona. Yeah, I had never heard of them either.

The video starts with this Euro-dude in a suit starting to blow up and crack apart like he’s made from plaster. Halfway through, the actual video player crack in half, and all of the surrounding parts of the site shake and fa...

Google’s Vice President of Search Product and User Experience Marissa Mayer was recently profiled in a Vogue Magazine article that offered a in-depth glimpse into the exec’s lifestyle, loves, career and fashion preferences. Now, Mayer has been named as one of Glamour Magazine’s 2009 Women of the Year. Joining Mayer on the list are a variety of female powerhouses and icons including Maya Angelou,...

If you’re a Twitter freak and think that a dedicated Twitter device is just the thing for you, read on.

This week we saw the launch of the TwitterPeek, a cute little device built by Peek that will do just about anything you want it to do, as long as all you want it to do is access Twitter. It won’t surf the web. It won’t make phone calls. It won’t support third party apps. But it most certainly d...

Up until now, if you wanted to use the location-based service Gowalla on the go, you had to have an iPhone. Today, that expands to Android. But rather than building an app, Gowalla has extended support to Android using the mobile web. This works because Android’s browser is closely tied to the device and is able to access location information, which is vital for Gowalla. The goal is to extend this...

textPlus, a text messaging app that’s powered by GOGII, has just hit the App Store. textPlus lets any iPhone or iPod Touch send free text messages to any cell number by using in-app advertising to cover its costs. There is no limit on how many text messages you can send per month, it’s just a matter of getting WiFi, 3G or an Edge connection. GOGII was one of the first companies that was funded by...

Today is Droid day — an event that I, like many tech bloggers, have been looking forward to for quite some time. Unlike some people, I wasn’t graced with a test Droid last week, so I was forced to go out and get one the old fashioned way: by getting to the store as early as possible, before the precious devices sold out. And while I was concerned about falling prey to a supply shortage, a part of ...

I think it’s safe to assume their Twitter account has been hacked.

Update: Yep. Now suspended.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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So much for the coming mobile nirvana of free mobile content – at least for iPhone users in Germany. Today Europe’s biggest newspaper, BILD-Zeitung, intends to use, in effect, brute force to compel users buy its new iPhone app. The paper tabloid is to block anyone using an iPhone browser from accessing its website.

Now, readers will not only have to pay for the dedicated BILD iPhone app, but they ...

It’s not yet clear what Chomp exactly is, but we do know that it’s a rather hot property right now. It took the still stealth start up just 10 days to raise a nice seed round from Ron Conway and a few other big name angel investors, we hear.

So what do we know? Well, the company is definitely in the mobile space. In fact, it’s a “BIG mobile play,” founder Ben Keighran tells us. Keighran, who in 20...

When news of the Litl Webbook broke out on Wednesday, I was pleased to learn that the company is located here in Boston, since there aren't nearly as many people in this area making actual hardware devices, as opposed to software and web companies. I got a chance to sit down with CEO John Chuang for a thorough overview of the Webbook, so check out the video inside for some information about the d...

More good news for Indian entrepreneurs! Infosys co-founder and chairman N. R. Narayana Murthy’s new VC firm, now called Catamaran Venture Fund, just added a whole lot more money to its coffers. A few weeks ago, we reported that Murthy was turning to “the dark side” after selling a large amount of company shares in order to set up a venture capital firm. To set up the fund, Murthy reportedly sold...

Do you see something strange in this screenshot of Google’s homepage today? No, not Bert and Ernie (it’s Sesame Street’s 40th birthday). It’s that ad for the Verizon Droid right there under the search box (today is also Droid Day). Although, the juxtaposition does make it seem like Bert and Ernie are trying to get you to buy a Droid.

Google’s homepage is normally an ad-free zone. No more than...