The success of leading personal finance Web site Mint.com since its win at TechCrunch40 last year gives some idea of what might be in store for this year's winner, Yammer. The real prize, or course, isn't the $50,000--it's the publicity. Since it's win, Mint.com raised $17 million in funding, according to a blog post by Jessica Guynn at the Los [...]

Our colleague Chris Albrecht over at NewTeeVee has done some investigating around reports that Microsoft's Silverlight had been tossed overboard by NBC in favor of Flash.  It's just not the case, Microsoft and NBC tell Chris. Speaking of setting the record straight, there were widespread reports that NBC earned just $5.75 million in revenue from online video advertising during the Olympics.  Industry sources [...]

TechCrunch awarded five jury selection prizes at the TechCrunch50 conference yesterday in addition to the top prize, which was awarded to Yammer. FitBit's discreet activity-tracking gadget, to go on sale this December exclusively on the company's Web site, earned the company one of the runner-up spots. The device, which can be carried in a pocket or clipped to clothing, tracks calories [...]

Yammer, a Twitter-like microblogging tool for businesses, won the top TechCrunch50 prize of $50,000, TechCrunch announced yesterday. I spoke with CEO David Sacks about the company after he presented on Monday, and he told me that it was "really cool" that judge "Marc Benioff said he liked it the best." Benioff, the CEO of salesforce.com, said he would buy Yammer [...]

Rafe Needleman, editor in chief of CNET's Webware, takes us for visit to the TechCrunch 50 Conference demo pit.  He visits Rate Surfer, Jibidee and Givvy. Rafe and his fellow editors at CNET just published a list of their favorite 10 startups from the TechCrunch 50 and DEMO conferences, both which took place this week. Kelsey just back from San Francisco where [...]

MySpace will allow users to upload video files of up to 512 MB from the 100 MB limit it has had in place.  It also will allow users to upload files directly from video camera to the site. Large upload capacity and direct upload via video cameras have been in place for some time at YouTube.  We're not sure how much the [...]

What is left for Google to solve with search?   It's much more than 10 percent, says Google VP Marissa Mayer, commenting on a much blogged interview she did recently with the Los Angeles Times. She told much the same to Michael Arrington in an in interview, he writes today. Here is our third and final installment of our three part interview done [...]

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Tweegee is one of the TechCrunch 50 companies.  Kelsey interviewed CEO Shay Bloch on Monday. Here's what Josh Lowensohn of CNET wrote about the new start-up:Tweegee is a virtual world that mixes e-mail, personal organization, and Flash gaming. It centers on an anime-like avatar that users build part by part. Likewise they can use a similar building tool to make their own hosted [...]

We are starting to blog dozens of video interviews from the TechCrunch50 conference.  We have a mix of the 50 companies and cool ones we found in the demo pit.  Here is Kelsey's interview with Pano Anthos, CEO of Boston-based hangout.net -- which is one of the TC 50. Here's how the TechCrunch editors describe the company: Hangout enables 16-24 year olds [...]

Yesterday in San Francisco, Kelsey Blodget, associate producer at Beet.TV sat down for an extensive interview with Google Vice President Marissa Mayer.  In this segment, Marissa talks about the development and functionality of Chrome, the new Web browser from Google. Marissa was at the TechCrunch 50 conference yesterday where she announced a new initiative with newspapers.  You can find our interview [...]

SAN FRANCISCO -- Ashton Kutcher was in San Francisco yesterday at the TechCrunch 50 conference to debut his new animated video celebrity site Blah Girls.  Liz Gannes from NewTeeVee was on the scene with with her video camera and got this interview the Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg. -- Andy Plesser, Executive Producer P.S. Thanks to Jemima Kiss at The Guardian for [...]

SAN DIEGO -- Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, co-executive producers of All Things Digital, are at DEMO in San Diego.  I've posted a video of Kara's first day at the conference including an interview with conference director Chris Shipley. Walt and Kara were featured on stage in a one-on-one dialogue late yesterday afternoon. Sam Diaz at ZDNet reports that in addition to [...]

SAN FRANCISCO -- Today at the TechCrunch50 conference, Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google, announced Google's plans to make scanned newspaper archives searchable through Google News. Over 100 newspapers are available at the product's launch today, Marissa told me in an interview after her session. Google will give the majority of revenue accrued from Google AdSense [...]

The anticipated news that will presented at the TechCrunch 50 conference in a couple of hours has just been released.  Google is organizing archives and feeds of newspapers around the globle. This new data will be served up on Google News and Google News Archives. The first phase is U.S. newspapers which have been offline to this point.  The program [...]

SAN DIEGO, CA -- Later this morning at DEMO, RealNetworks will introduce a $30 software program which will allow users to save theatrical DVD's to their PC or detachable drive.  They use the program to save DVD's to up to five PC's. The product is called RealDVD. It is just for PCs for now and a Mac version is in development, [...]

For the past several weeks, we have been uploading hundreds of our videos to CrunchBase, the TechCrunch database of the 6000 or more companies the influential tech blog follows.  There is no financial arrangement here, and this is not an exclusive arrangement by any means, but it is an extremely valuable way to expand attention for for Beet.TV and we [...]

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, CA -- A Delta 2 rocket carrying a GeoEye satellite lifted off at 11:50 a.m.  PDT today.  The imaging satellite will provide mapping exclusively to Google.  The Google logo is seen on the logo of the rocket in the photo taken this morning.  (See below.) Reuters reports that Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were on [...]

We are impressed this morning with the way live video feeds of tropical storm Hanna have been integrated by Gannett's USA Today and other Gannett television properties.  The video interface is from Mogulus, the Manhattan start-up which was recently funded by Gannett. We have used Mogulus to stream several Beet.TV events.  It's great to see that this innovative Web video company [...]

Getting digital content from multiple home computers and servers to the television is the goal of HP, Apple, Microsoft and others.  Earlier this summer HP introduced Media Smart Connect, a $349 device which pulls content from various PC's, Macs and servers via WiFi to a television set. Rex Crum over at MarketWatch has a comprehensive story up today on the race [...]