crunch

AOL just can't seem to catch a break this week, but a few pieces of bad news doesn't presage the demise of the Internet media giant.

First it lost CTO Alex Gounares, who wanted to move back to Seattle. Then it lost tech head Tim Dierks and sales exec Tim Castelli. And to top it all off, news leaked out that the struggling media giant is about to hand out pink slips in its West Coast office.

About the only piece of good news was the departure of TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld. The loss of the leader of more

In the Broadway musical "Oliver!," orphaned Oliver Twist famously holds out his empty bowl and asks, "Please sir, may I have some more?" For those of us who make mobile applications, we feel like Oliver, holding out our virtual bowl, begging for more spectrum to fill the hungry bellies of our customers.

App developers cheered when the divided Congress passed legislation providing for incentivized spectrum auctions while freeing up unlicensed spectrum. This is a step in the right direction, but it didn't fill our belly. While more

Two years into a decade-long plan to free up wireless spectrum to handle an explosion in mobile data traffic growth, Washington politics are crippling the Federal Communications Commission's ability to reach any of its goals.

In March 2010, the FCC identified in its National Broadband Plan a dire need for more spectrum in the U.S. It outlined a timeline for getting 300 megahertz of spectrum in the pipeline by 2015 with an additional 200MHz opened up for auction by 2020. In total the plan would create 500MHz of new wireless spectrum that could be auctioned off, or nearly more

ReadWriteWeb, a popular tech news site, has been acquired by San Francisco-based Say Media.

The site's editor, Richard MacManus, announced the deal this morning, explaining that RWW will join Say's Technology channel, giving it access to more than 75 million monthly readers:

ReadWriteWeb is going to get bigger and even better. Our plans include widening ReadWriteWeb's editorial scope and expanding our team. That starts from today, with the addition of SplatF's Dan Frommer to our team as an editor-at-large. We will also be doing a redesign, utilizing the sophisticated designers at SAY Media. With SAY's

SAN FRANCISCO--In 20 years, a majority of new cars will be electric and the world's single largest source of energy will be solar power, Tesla Motors and SpaceX founder Elon Musk said today.

Speaking at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference here, the 40-year-old billionaire co-founder of PayPal shared his vision of the future, and also gave the room full of would-be entrepreneurs some sobering advice about what they should expect when trying to get companies off the ground.

"Expect it to be difficult," Musk said. "A friend phrased it well: 'Starting a company is like eating glass and staring into more

SAN FRANCISCO--In a "fireside chat" at TechCrunch Disrupt today, Silicon Valley venture capital guru John Doerr announced the launch of Erly, a new social network built around "experiences."

Doerr, the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner who is considered among the most important VCs in Silicon Valley, said during an interview by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington that Erly was built around the idea of "a different kind of interaction, an experience graph." Erly was founded by Eric Feng, the founder of Hulu (who was also a Kleiner, Perkins partner).

Erly's first product is called Collections, and is designed to give more

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--If there's one thing that late night TV hosts like David Letterman and Jay Leno are said to hate, it's when a star books both their shows back to back.

The tech industry doesn't have its own Letterman and Leno rivalry, but one could say that this week's head-to-head TechCrunch Disrupt and Demo Fall shows are a pretty good analogy.

So it was a bit strange to go to both shows this week and see the same high-profile kick-off speaker at each, LinkedIn founder and Graylock Partners principal Reid Hoffman. And both presentations more

Too busy to keep up with the tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET for Monday, September 12.

• AT&T-iPad; site hacker goes to court. The hacker said in an e-mail: "I did not fold the two previous times when the FBI tried to frame me as a terrorist" for allegedly calling in a bomb threat to a synagogue (a charge he denies). "I will not fold now when they try to libel me as a thief. My indictment conveys a message that I am some sort of identity thief."

• CNET's Laura more

SAN FRANCISCO--Any fan of tomatoes knows that buying them at farmers' markets is expensive, yet the alternative of buying affordable, bland tomatoes at supermarkets is entirely unattractive.

The same dynamic, of course, goes for just about any type of fresh food, be it meat, fish, or other vegetables. And while there are a growing number of companies that deliver fresh produce to people's homes, consumers have very little control over what they get when they buy in to such systems.

Now, a Palo Alto, Calif., startup called Farmigo is throwing its hat into the ring, hoping to help consumers more