It’s the ticket-scalping conundrum: Will it be cheaper to buy seats in advance of the event or will prices drop as it gets closer to game time and the sellers want to unload their wares? SeatGeek, a new company that showed its stuff at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco, aims to take the guesswork […]

At the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco, the focus is clearly on start-ups with solid business plans. Some are even making money already. But that’s not to say entrepreneurs have given up on the attention-getting gimmickry that often characterizes such trade shows. Redbeacon, which is offering ways for local businesses to get customers, demonstrated its service […]

I have to confess: I sometimes get a little weary from the hype that surrounds new technology offerings. This happens particularly when I’m wearing my reporter badge and walking the floor at a conference like TechCrunch50, this week’s blizzard of start-ups desperate for attention, held in a cavernous, deafening hall in San Francisco that is literally overheating […]

It’s a common refrain, but it always bears repeating: Why aren’t women better represented at technology conferences? TechCrunch50 is no exception. “It’s like a 20 to 1 ratio of men to women at this conference,” said Stella Yu, a personal brand advisor from San Francisco. And that ratio manifests itself, she believes, in what happens on […]

The start-up world has converged on San Francisco’s Design Center Concourse this morning, where the TechCrunch50 conference is underway. And nothing says how hot the world of iPhone apps is right now than the presence of the first presenter: comedian/magician Penn Jillette. Yes, Penn and Teller have an iPhone app, which will be for sale for $1.99 at […]

Investors worried about the lack of payoffs in this recession can take heart from the deal confirmed on stage at this morning’s TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco: Personal finance software giant Intuit will buy the upstart start-up Mint.com for $170 million. It was only in February of this year that Intuit lawyers sent Mint a threatening letter, […]

It’s the sad fact of life for MySpace, a sponsor of this week’sTechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco: Silicon Valley loves Facebook and Twitter. MySpace? Not so much. Yet that doesn’t stop Rupert Murdoch’s favorite social network from trying. Chad Russell, who runs MySpace’s OpenSocial team, is at the conference, trying to persuade developers to create apps for the […]

It was supposed to be about Apple Inc.’s dazzling new products. Instead, the company’s press conference on Wednesday was about the man. Grinning like a kid in a toy store, Chief Executive Steve Jobs stole the spotlight with his first official public appearance in nearly a year. He received a liver transplant about five months […]

Updated at 11:15: It’s over. The updated iPod Nano will be $149 for the 8GB model, and $179 for the 16GB. Not the big hardware announcement folks were hoping for. And no sign of the Beatles, whose songs are still not in the iTunes catalog. Updated at 11:12: More on the new Nano: It will […]

“It’s only rock and roll, but we like it,” Apple says in its invitation to the media for its announcement tomorrow of something new and unspecified. So we probably shouldn’t expect something other than rock and roll, like the tablet computer Apple is said to be working on. And considering that “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ […]