TechCrunch Giveaway: iPad 2 Loaded With Jimi Hendrix: The Complete Experience

We have an Apple iPad 2 to give away today. Do you want it? Would you say you’re a big Jimi Hendrix fan? Then you’re in luck. Not only are we giving away an iPad 2, but we are giving one away that has a pretty awesome Jimi Hendrix app already installed on it.

Sony Music, The Hendrix Estate and Universal Mind have joined forces to create this super immersive experience — an amazing discovery tool that doesn’t just stream music, but unveils Jimi’s life story complete with interactive audio, video, pics, landmarks and more that you can curate yourself.

If you’re a Hendrix fan, it’s pretty cool to say the least. If you want a shot at winning this brand new iPad 2 with the new Jimi Hendrix Experience app, just follow the steps below.

1) Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page:

2) Then do one of the following:

- Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TechCrunch hashtag)
- Or leave us a comment below telling us why you want the iPad 2

The contest starts now and ends Sunday, November 20th at 7:30pm PT.

Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will choose at random and contact the winner this Sunday. Anyone in the world is eligible.

Here’s a little video on Jimi Hendrix: The Complete Experience

Financial Times Hits 1M Users On HTML5 Site That Dodges Apple’s Tax

The newspaper industry is struggling to make ends meet. Mobile could be the solution, but the Apple App Store comes with a 30% tax on the subscriptions that established news outlets depend on. To buck Apple’s tax, London paper Financial Times decided to launch as a HTML5 mobile web app rather than a native app. Now it has proven the HTML5 model can work for news. Today Financial Times announced it has hit 1 million registered users who account for 20% of the outlet’s online page views, and 15% of new digital consumer subscriptions.

HTML5 works great for news publishers because they predominantly transmit text and don’t require the processing power and deep hardware integrations afforded by native mobile apps. Instead, since HTML5 is accessible across device types and it doesn’t roadblock new users with a download, it helps publishers gain readers and sell more subscriptions without paying a platform fee.

Despite grim projections about the future of paid news, FT found that users who register on mobile devices are 2.5 more likely to subscribe. Thanks to an aggressive set of in-app prompts, 45% of the 1 million registered users add the web app to their home screen, which can vastly increase return visits.

Mobile is also changing when people consume the Financial Times. While the desktop site is most popular during mid-day, the mobile site sees a huge spike between 7 and 8am, presumably from people reading when they first wake up or on their commute.

Other news outlets should see these figures and think critically about whether HTML5 might serve them better than a native app. Getting users to subscribe is tough enough without paying 30% for unnecessary functionality and a barrier to new readers.

Yelp’s Biggest Shareholders: Who Owns What And Who Sold What

In February 2010, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman and chairman Max Levchin each pocketed $15 million each in a private sale of stock to Elevation Partners, which previously had bought $25 million worth of shares from the company in Yelp’s series E financing. The private purchases was part of another $36.8 million Elevation paid individual shareholders, including Stoppelman and Levchin.

It is increasingly common for growth investors like Elevation or DST to provide founders and early shareholders with some liquidity before an IPO. Now that Yelp has filed to go public, these details are coming out in its S-1. Stoppelman and Levchin are still the two largest individual shareholders in Yelp. Stoppelman owns 11.1 percent of the company, while Levchin actually owns a little bit more, with 13.8 percent. Depending on what Yelp’s valuation will be at its IPO, those stakes could be worth more than $100 million each (assuming a $1 billion market cap).

At the time of the Elevation transaction, Stoppelman sold 7.4 million shares, which would have been nearly a quarter of his shares at the time, based on the information available in the S-1. Meanwhile, Elevation became Yelp’s second largest shareholder, with almost the same number of shares as Bessemer (22.4 perecent versus 22.5 percent). Benchmark is No.3 with 16.2 percent.

The biggest shareholders are listed in the table below:

Sony Ericsson’s Vscreens Moves Your Mobile Content To The Big Screen

Getting content from your Android device onto a bigger screen has never been terribly hard, but Sony Ericsson’s Vscreens service makes it an absolute cakewalk. There’s no fiddling with DLNA settings or fumbling with cables here — just QR codes.

Once you’ve downloaded the Vscreens app from the Android Market (which works on any Android device running 2.1 later, not just SE handsets), point your browser at vscreens.com and scan that QR code. Your device and the website will forge a connection, and allow you to quickly throw photos up onto a bigger screen. Scrolling back and forth between photos was fairly smooth, and to my surprise, pinch-to-zoom worked nicely as well.

I tested it on my work-issued laptop with great success, and Sony Ericsson says the service should work on any screen with an internet connection and a browser (and yes, that includes iPads). The truly daring can even share videos, though it requires both devices to be on the same WiFi network. Sadly, it had a rough time working with the episode of Doctor Who I always have on my phone, but shorter videos worked just fine.

Oh, and did I mention that the Vscreens is free? Sony Ericsson’s got it labelled as a beta product, and it occasionally shows: some pictures came up pixelated (though it’s probably more the camera’s fault), and buffering some videos took longer than I was willing to wait. Still, it’s an impressive little service to play around with, and with any luck it won’t die when Sony and Ericsson part ways.

Amex Users On Foursquare Get Free Money ($25) On “Small Biz Saturday”

Foursquare is giving away a free $25 credit to American Express cardholders through a new promotion taking place on November 26th, aka “Small Business Saturday.” (Yes, everyone has their own Black Friday spinoff now). To get the credit, Foursquare users have to spend $25 at a local merchant and check-in using the mobile app.

There are “hundreds of thousands” of participating merchants across the U.S., according to the map in the Foursquare blog post.

To claim the deal, American Express users will first need to sync their account with Foursquare at sync.americanexpress.com/foursquare. Afterwards, the available merchants will appear in the “Explore” tab in the Foursquare app and on the Foursquare homepage, starting on Saturday the 26th.

In order to claim the credit, after setup, users will need tap the new “load to card” button that appears upon check-in. To save some hassle, you may want wait to check in until after you’ve spent the $25 with the merchant before checking in, unless you’re positive you’ll be buying something at that store. The credit will show up on your next Amex statement, five business days after your purchase.

Foursquare isn’t the only social media service American Express has tapped in promotion of this Small Business Saturday thing which it created via its American Express OPEN group. The company recently appeared as a Klout perk too. If you’re not into Foursquare and Klout, there’s also a Facebook page where you can find businesses and claim your credit.