Khush Lands Funding To Help Wannabe Singers Create Music On The Go
Khush, a startup that develops music applications, has raised a new round of funding from Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, angel investor Yee Lee, and Georgia Tech ATDC VentureLab. The startup declined to reveal how much money was raised in the round. Co-founded by Prerna Gupta (you can read her recent TechCrunch guest post here), Khush develops an artificial intelligence technology that helps people
8 Musical iPad Apps for the Digital Maestro
Peter Meyers is a digital book producer and the author of Best iPad Apps (O’Reilly Media). He’s covered the intersection of writing and technology for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired and blogs at anewkindofbook.com.Early iPad critics were sure about one thing: This gadget was going to be for consuming, not creating. iPadders, the argument went, will spend all their time feas
Microsoft lands its largest ever Surface order... from a karaoke bar
There's not much to see right now, but it appears that Red MR is well on its way to becoming one of the most advanced (and probably the most amusing) karaoke bars in the world. Ahead of its Hong Kong debut this Saturday, said company has already installed six Surfaces in its two bars, and is aiming to fit more to fill up all 80 rooms -- and that number could go up to 300 in the near future -- onc
Droid X and Droid 2 gain overclocking app: painlessly push your CPU for just $1
Tired of wading through dissertations in hopes of grokking a hacked-up method of overclocking your Droid X and / or Droid 2? Clearly, you aren't alone. Unstable Apps has just released a $0.99 gem that enables one-tap overclocking on the aforementioned phones, with DX/D2 Overclocker giving users the option to run at low voltage, stock voltage or two higher-than-recommended voltages. Of course, giv
From Accelerate 2010 In Singapore: List Of “Asia’s Top 50 Apps”
Earlier this week, I attended Accelerate 2010 in Singapore, a two-day tech and mobile industry event that attracted no less than 2,000 international attendees. Organizer and major telco SingTel (which boasts around 350 million customers worldwide) offered up a slew of presentations and panels. But giving in to my penchant for discovering Asian startups, I will just focus on Accelerate’s so-called
Is Google’s Mobile Loss in China Kai-fu Lee’s Gain?
Former head of Google China, Kai-fu Lee, insists—insists—that he is not happy that Google imploded its business in China. “Seeing the work that I put in, how could I be happy to see that?” he says. In fact, in a press release all about his incubator’s companies being built on top of Android he doesn’t use the G-word once. “Given the pull out, we’ll accept the situation and do our best,” he says hu
Startup Battlefield Round 3: The Final Disruption
We’re down to the final five companies at the TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield: Betterment, Movieclips, Publish2, Soluto, and UJAM. This afternoon these companies are all making their last appeals to a panel of expert judges, explaining how they disrupt their respective markets. My live notes from the session are below. The judges: John Borthwick Ron Conway Marissa Mayer Sam Schwartz Quin
Lightning Review: The Ultimate Karaoke Experience Kit
We've all seen Karaoke kits, but few have beheld the sheer awesomeness of The Ultimate Karaoke Experience Kit, an online Karaoke service for Mac and PC. The Pitch: It's web karaoke with access to 5,300 songs online, complete with YouTube-esque song recording and sharing. The Price: A $40 kit includes 2 mics and a base unit (free with a year's subscription to 5,000 songs) and $10/month for the ser
Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 Liveblog
We are at the Hotel Catalonia Plaza, here in Barcelona, listening to Steve Ballmer sing the virtues of the new Windows Mobile 6.5. Update: It's over. The new user interface looks great. 4:02 PM: OK, it's wrap. Windows Mobile 6.5 looks nice, people. The UI is very nice. I'm off to get some food and wine. I'm sure it will look even better in 10 minutes. 4:01 PM: Steve is replying, but you can tell h
Microsoft Songsmith's Corny Musical Infomercial
video Microsoft's Songsmith software, which creates Casiotone-style beats to match whatever off-key warbling is optimistically sung into a mic, finally has an ad as corny and annoying as the software itself promises to be. I know I've been clamoring for an amateur low-budget musical from Microsoft, because why should Phil's Discount Used Lawn Furniture of Blueball, Pennsylvania have a monopoly on my inv
Lips Karaoke Game For Xbox 360: Hardware and Media Import Review
Xbox 360's Lips karaoke game is notable for two reasons. One is the Vegas loungy motion-sensitive wireless microphones that trigger bonus scoring opportunities for you as part of the game. The second is the feature that lets you use any DRM-free song from your iTunes/Zune/Amazon library as a base for singing. So what the hell went wrong? A number of things. Head to Kotaku if you want to see how th
New HP Notebooks Boast Hi-Def 16:9 Screens
HP has dropped two notebooks catering to portable home theater addicts. Both computers run Windows Vista SP1 and come with Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 processors, Nvidia GeForce 9600M graphics chips, 4GB DDR2 RAM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and a DVD±R/RW drive. The HDX16 has a 16-inch 1366x768 pixel Brightview display and comes with a 320GB hard drive while the HDX18 boasts an 18.4 inch 1920x1080p LCD screen
TuneWiki Audio For Google Android Looks Very Impressive
This is TuneWiki, the music playback app that shows Karaoke-like lyrics and album art on almost all the music on your phone. It's been officially ported to Android and looks very, very impressive. They've added features like searching YouTube for videos of your tracks, plus searching their database for certain song lyrics if you only remember part of a song. There's also the built-in Google Maps A
Braille Karaoke Good For Blind, Even Better for Deaf
Two Japanese companies are teaming up to develop a karaoke system for the blind called the Seika. Hooking up to a PC via USB, custom software will import karaoke lyrics and convert them into 40 characters of braille on a separate "display." The result is a realtime, networkable lyrics feed for those who may not have a particular song memorized, creating a world where disability hampers no one from
Sony E3 Liveblog
We're here at Sony's E3 press event, preparing for the onslaught of hardware and software news they've got planned for today. Could there be a price cut? A new WiiMote-like peripheral? Just new games? Just old games? Whatever it is, it's going to be shown on the giant stage full of Sony's TVs. It's about to start, so keep refreshing so you can see the exciting Sony-ness. Sony-osity. Sony-manium. U
Microsoft E3 Liveblog
We're here in LA and livebloging the Microsoft presser today at 10:30 PDT. Mark Wilson and I will be covering the hell out of the hardware announcements, but if you're interested in the new game announcements, Kotaku will be the place to go. What announcements will there be? A motion-controlled interface? A karaoke controller? We'll find out soon. The liveblog will be here, in this post, so bookma
Hannah Montana Mic Kit Makes Singing Easy for Little Girls and Grown Men Alike
Before you laugh, Hannah Montana has some high-tech instruments out that even hardcore gadget heads can appreciate. My favorite is the Mic Kit, expertly demoed by Disney creative director Jon Guerra in the clip above. The kit is a USB mic with software that teaches you how to sing with proper pitch control and recognition through a karaoke-style game. It analyzes your vocal range too, and adjusts
Wednesday: TechCrunch / CrunchGear Berlin Meetup
250 people. 27 sponsoring startups. Countless others coming as guests. There’s just one word for the TechCrunch / CrunchGear Meetup in Berlin this Wednesday, June 11: Awesome. Organised with the excellent assistance of our local partner twidox, the event has been made possible by our generous sponsors, listed after the jump. Imedo.de has kindly offered to throw the networking event at their offic
TuneWiki’s iPhone-Like Media Player for Android
video The race is on for software supremacy on Google’s Android platform, as developers compete to develop the applications that will eventually come preloaded on branded phones. Today TuneWiki, one of the most popular third-party developers for the iPhone, has announced a media player for Android that will feature an iPhone-esque interface, support for synching with iTunes, and the karaoke-like lyric
Source: Benchmark Invests In TuneWiki To Bring Song Lyrics To iPhone
video Israeli startup TuneWiki delivers user generated song lyrics to music playing on a PC or mobile device. The service, which was launched in December 2007, became a hit with “hundreds of thousands” of downloads to jailbroken iPhones alone (says our source), despite the very sketchy nature of the main website and the fact that only hacked iPhones can use the app. Why is TuneWiki so popular? The vide
Pioneer MEP-7000 and SEP-C1 Software Is Digital DJ Dream, Purists' Nightmare
Rather like some of my Swedish girlfriends, Pioneer is going after mobile DJs and bars with their new MEP-7000 player and matching SEP-C1 controller. The MEP-7000 allows to play anything except vinyl (which will probably cause a Macbook-Air-sized conflict), including MP3, WAV, AIFF and AAC files, from any source, including hard drives, CD, DVD, USB keys and computers. It can also work alongside so
CES 2008: Comprehensive Robot Roundup
We had a wail of a time at CES 2008, but we were not the only ones. The various robots on display were also going nuts at the convention. We have rounded them all up in this excellent video, showing you the neat robotics that we thought were worthy of a video shout out. Hit the clip to see them in action, and then read on for a full breakdown of all the droids featured. From first viewed to last
HP Pops a Pair of Notebook Refreshes for Pre-CES
It's an HP kind of night, apparently. The HDX Dragon, its beastly 20-inch gaming notebook, gets a shiny new gamer-worthy 1080p res screen: The world's "first 20.1-inch WUXGA XHD Ultra BrightView widescreen display." To pump all those pixels, the middling old GeForce Go 8000 video card is tossed in favor a 512MB 8800M GTS and the processors are spec'd upwards. Topping out the HD goodness is Blu-r
TuneWiki Is the Karaoke-Like Lyrics App Apple Must Include in iPhone
video Lifehacker's Adam Pash (co-author of the best iPhone book with some dude called "Jason Chen") told me this weekend about TuneWiki, an iPhone application that downloads songs lyrics from the web and shows them synched with the song in real time, karaoke-style. It works great and, being a closet karaoke whore, I admit I'm hooked. Apple must include this app integrated in their next firmware update.
Tongfang PMC-V800 PMP plays Flash video
Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video Like a thousand monkeys producing Shakespeare, eventually the endless tidal wave of generic PMPs from China had to result in something interesting, like Tsinghua Tongfang's PMC-V800. Not only does this 2.4-inch PMP sport FLV and SWF support, enabling it to play downloaded YouTube videos and Flash animations directly, it's also got mapping software, a kar
Mini Review: Amazon Non-DRM MP3 Store now in Public Beta, Easy to Use
Amazon's MP3 store is now in public beta, so you can all have a fiddle around with the DRM-free service &mdash like I just did. First observations:There are two million tunes available, from 180,000 artists, including tracks from EMI and Universal. Over half of the songs are priced at 89 cents, including the Top 100 tracks, and they're at 256 kbps resolution. Once you've installed the Amazon M
i-Sing MP3 microphone replaces vocals with your own
Filed under: Portable Audio Looking for that perfect Christmas in July gift for your favorite kiddo? The exorbitantly-named "It's Outrageous!" company has dolled out just the thing with its laughable, albeit well-featured i-Sing microphone. This device may sport all of the tell-tale signs of a good toy gone bad, but this karaoke enabler actually plays back MP3s and digitally removes the vocalist i