Tuyen's Blog

Posts for Tag: techcrunch

This is very scary and serious stuff...

How the group can act together to keep out new angel investors invading the market and driving up valuations.
via techcrunch.com

TechCrunch (specifically editor Michael Arrington) breaks this story. WOW...

As an entrepreneur, I can't tell you how much this scares me. The current start-up ecosystem works because of entrepreneurs being able to secure funding. Angel investing was a boon to this new crop of start-ups where it no longer costs millions to start a company, essentially expanding the universe of potential investors beyond just VC firms. Without this pipeline of funding, lots of start-ups will not be able to grow and flourish.

On another note, the comments section of many TC articles usually contains a good amount of people bitching and moaning about how TC doesn't do real news and how Arrington just rants and raves. To these people I say, STFU and GAFG. Yes, the tone of many TC posts are informal and don't read like an AP piece. But I believe that only blogs like TC can get access to write stories like this for this particular industry of ours. If I have to get the occasional airline or iPhone rant, fine by me.

Theft, journalism and professionalism

There's been a lot of chatter re: the iPhone leak and the raiding of certain "journalist's" homes. I won't rehash here so feel free to read up on the current situation.

I feel bad for Jason Chen and his wife for having their door kicked in. But I most definitely don't think it's unjustified. What should he have expected when he paid $5K for a stolen phone? I guess what pisses me off the most is how some people can't seem to understand that freedom of the press and crimes committed by journalists are two separate things. He's not getting his door kicked in because he leaked the next iPhone but because he PURCHASED STOLEN PROPERTY. If he had found the iPhone himself or if the person who found it gave it to Gizmodo to do their story, I'd have no issue. The fact that Gizmodo was willing to break the law to get the scoop on a story pretty much moves them out of legitimate journalism to tabloid fare for me. Michael Arrington writes a pretty reasonable post of how he would handle the situation - one I agree with in terms of the bounds of responsible, professional journalism. Unfortunately, the way the world works there is always an incentive to push and break the boundaries of the law in the name of "journalism". We as readers are just as responsible. How many outraged people did NOT go to Gizmodo to see the leaked iPhone photos/video?

In the end, I hope Jason Chen doesn't go to jail or face any type of punishment. He was only doing what the bosses at Gawker expected and asked of him. As for the guy who sold them the phone.........

Finally, a real reason to buy the iPad

via techcrunch.com

Curse you Reed Hastings. I was not planning on buying an iPad... AT ALL. Didn't see the need. Not quite a laptop, not quite as portable as the iPhone. But now Netflix had to go and ruin it for me. I will not be one of the fan boys lined up this Saturday to buy an iPad but it seems inevitable that I will buy one within the next year. Being able to watch my entire Netflix streaming library? Check. Add to that the soon to be released Slingbox app for the iPad? Check and mate. All the other junk like maps, email, web browsing, etc. are just nice add-ons to these two killer apps. You're an asshole Steve Jobs for making me buy your shit.