Let’s Drink Tonight Helps You Find People To Drink With

Alexia Tsotsis currently works for TechCrunch as a writer. She is also a blogger who attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA. She majored in Writing and Art, moving to New York City shortly after graduation to work in the Entertainment/Media industry. After four years of living in New York City and attending courses at New York... ? Learn More

Team Let’s Drink Tonight, consisting of developers Zephyr Pellerin, Allen Romero, Jeremia Kimelman and Hunter Hastings, took advantage of its opportunity at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon and attempted to solve the age old conundrum of not having anybody to drink with.

Users who desire company while they imbibe can sign into Lets Drink Tonight and answer four hard-hitting profile questions along the lines of “Coolest person I’ve shared a drink with?” and “Favorite drink?…” They can then select their location and whether they want to drink with Facebook Friends or whether they’re feeling like meeting new people.

The app will then text you if there’s someone around you ready to drink. Not a recipe for disaster, at all. Nope.

So thus far I’ve put in my info and let the world know that I’m available for drinks, but the app’s suggestion — a Mr. Vinodh Kumar — doesn’t seem to be available (as in the link to his profile isn’t working). Guess I’m going to have go home and write about startups launching at TechCrunch Disrupt instead.

Let’s Drink Tonight backstage interview above, and Hackathon presentation below.

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Video: Kawasaki’s Power-Assist Robot Suit Helps Humans Lift Heavy Objects

Dr. Serkan Toto currently works as the first and only Asia-based writer for the TechCrunch network, mainly covering Japan-related technology and web companies for TechCrunch, CrunchGear and MobileCrunch. Serkan also works full-time as an independent web and mobile industry consultant with a focus on the Japanese market. He is sept-lingual, holds an MBA and is a PhD in economics. Serkan... ? Learn More

Japanese tech powerhouse Kawasaki is working on the so-called Power Assist Suit, a wearable robot that helps humans carry objects weighing 30-40kg without any effort from the muscles. The suit is actually one of quite a few similar models currently available in Japan.

The Kawasaki robot features a total of four motors in the parts covering the hips and knees (see picture below). The control unit and lithium battery are placed in the part placed around the lower back.

According to Kawasaki, the self-supporting robot is designed in a way that wearers don’t feel the weight of the suit itself when moving around. The Power Assist Suit can be adjusted to the length of the wearer’s legs and doesn’t take more than a minute to put on and off, Kawasaki promises.

The company wants to commercialize the robot after testing it out in its own factories for one to two years.

Here’s a video that shows a human walking around with the Power Assist Suit:

Via Robonable [JP]

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TechStars Graduate FullContact Lands $1.5 Million, Helps Keep Contact Records Updated

Robin Wauters currently works as a staff writer for TechCrunch and lead editor of Virtualization.com. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in Belgium, a tiny country in Europe. He can often be found working from his home or... ? Learn More

FullContact, a startup that just ‘graduated’ from business accelerator TechStars, has raised $1.5 million in Series A funding from 500 Startups, Tango / High Country Venture, BulletTime Ventures, SK Ventures, Zelkova Ventures and angel investors.

FullContact provides an API that software developers can use inside their services and applications to provide users complete and up-to-date contact information.

Basically, FullContact lets developers tap into its database of more than 100 million contact records to turn partial, out-of-date contact records into complete contact records.

Information includes phone numbers, email addresses, postal addresses, name, title, company, social profile URLs, an image, birthday, instant messenger handles, and more.

Sound a little creepy? It depends on how you look at it.

The startup employs a crowdsourcing model to update the contact information, only shares contact information that’s publicly available on the Web (social networks, other APIs etc.), and allows any software application to leverage their contact database via their API. Currently, over 750 developers use their API.

The startup says its technology can, however, not be used with advertising networks, ad exchanges or services that tie cookies to contact data.

FullContact was founded by Bart Lorang, Travis Todd, and Dan Lynn in 2010.

FullContact is the API that keeps contact information current. Developers that have applications with people data can utilize the API to clean, enhance, and keep that information fresh...

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