Tech Peek Base

A group of entrepreneurs and investors have partnered to create a new Silicon Valley based business incubator called The Start Project.

Behind the new company are Polaris Venture Partners, the founders of 83 Degrees (Webshots, 30 Boxes, Power Twitter, fbExchange) and entrepreneur/investor Josh Felser (Spinner, Crackle, Freestyle Capital).

Yes, it’s that time of year when we empty out the TUAW swag vaults and pass the savings on. Our candidate today: He’s avian, he’s blue, and he might be coming to you….

Yes, it’s the icon come to life who chirps his way into your heart, Ollie the Twitterrific bird. The Iconfactory’s chatty quasi-mascot has been rendered into toy form (both in regular and limited-edition flocked versions) by designer David Latham and Strangekiss Art Toys, and we’ve got four of the wee blue birdies to give away to our lucky readers.

Like other leagues, the NHL continues to see a major uptick in video use and is looking for ways to make the most of it with fans and advertisers. Once heralded as the up-and-coming video player for the National Hockey League, the NHL Network Online is being benched today in favor of NHL VideoCenter, a less-cluttered, higher quality, more social contender with expanded content.

VideoCenter was developed with NeuLion, as was the predecessor that launched for the 2008 Stanley Cup playoffs. The most visible change at first is the environment. The distracting, rotating ad panels are gone in favor of bolder pre-roll or banner ads, leaving more space for the player and a better chance for the advertiser to be noticed. The video window is larger. Sharing was available before but this player includes buttons for Twitter, Digg and Facebook plus the ability to resize the embedded player. A single highlight can be shared or the package.

The wait is finally over. Over a year after its memorable (and zany) debut at TechCrunch 50 2008, Tonchidot’s Sekai Camera iPhone application is now available worldwide. The augmented reality (AR) app has already established itself as a huge hit in Japan, and now Tonchidot is taking its shot at world domination. Or, at least, at getting everyone to start leaving each other geo-tagged virtual Post-It notes. You can grab Sekai Camera here, free of charge.

The premise behind the app is quite simple: as you go about your day, Sekai Camera invites you to leave text messages, photos, and audio recordings that will appear as floating bubbles wherever you created them. You can also fire up Sekai Camera to look at the world around you to see what kind of content has been left by other users. As you spin the camera around, you’ll see new messages pop up as floaty icons. Click one, and you’ll see the content that was shared previously. It’s a bit like Twitter in that everything is

The following guest post was written by Edo Segal (@edosegal).

It was 1993 and I had just decided to drop out of college. I was a graphic design major in a great art school but decided I want to start my second company. Knowing this would mark the conclusion of my studies there I set out to create my final project. I would write a short story, design and produce it in print. I put out an edition of 300 and gave it to my friends and people who inspired me like author William Gibson.

“So that’s your advice is it? As my agent? On the week my book comes out in paperback, I should produce my own pirated version and give it away free? Why don’t I just punch my publisher in the face? That would be less work.”

My agent rocked back in his chair (a chair bought with 15% of my earnings) and laughed. “I didn’t say it was my advice, I just said there’s nothing they can do to stop you.”

The Mac community and TechCrunch love giveaways, but nothing beats the MacStories giveaway. MacStories is giving away over 450 licenses to Mac and iPhone applications, that total to over $10,000. Crazy, right?

The event, which is run by Federico Viticci, is called “The Christmas Apps Tree” and features interviews with designers, bloggers and developers, plus some cool guest posts and of course the big giveaway.

When Preetam Mukherjee started Marcellus.tv in March 2007, his company was one of the very few players in the professional online video hosting space. He believed he was building a killer product that would become a blockbuster and would compete handily with the one established player in the space, Brightcove. To ensure that he wouldn’t tip off any potential competitors, he went into “stealth mode”.

Google has made a change to Chrome OS to move the user login from the machine to the browser. Our guess is Google is, or will eventually use, Google Friend Connect to facilitate login.

The feature was first mentioned on October 13: “Using Chrome as our login manager has a number of potential benefits.

Has the saga finally come to an end? Dow Jones is reporting that Psystar will be firing its eight employees and then “shutting things down immediately,” in the words of the company’s attorney with the bad-ass name, Eugene Action. Besides, after the latest round of losses at the hands of Apple, this should come as a shock to nobody. Now that we’ve put all that behind us, can we concentrate on something of importance — like Tweeting swears from the Zune HD Twitter app?