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09 Feb ' 13:52
Instagram Founder’s Girlfriend Learns How To Code For V-Day, Builds Lovestagram
This might just be the sweetest Valentine’s Day story I’ve ever heard. It’s definitely the sweetest Valentine’s Day story I’ve ever written.
Kaitlyn Trigger is a marketing director at Rally.org. She also happens to be Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger’s girlfriend of two and a half years (The 26 year old Krieger and 27 year old Trigger met at a friend’s house in October of 2009 and moved in together in October 2010). And my hero.
posted 37 mins agoLinkedIn Beats The Street, Q4 Revenue Up 105 Percent To $167.7M
Professional social network LinkedIn just reported stronger than expected fourth quarter 2011 earnings today. Earnings came in at $0.12 per share. Revenue for the fourth quarter was $167.7 million, an increase of 105% compared to $81.7 million for the fourth quarter of 2010. Net income for the fourth quarter was $6.9 million, compared to net income of $5.3 million for the fourth quarter of 2010. Analysts expected the company to earn $0.07 per share on revenues of $159.72 million.
“Q4 once again exceeded our expectations for member engagement and business growth. It was a fitting end to a memorable year in which we reinforced our position as the pre-eminent professional network on the web,” said Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn. “We believe continued focus on our members and technology infrastructure positions us well for accelerated product innovation in 2012.”
Semil Shah, Contributorposted 50 mins agoTCTV: In the Studio, Bain Capital Ventures is California Dreaming
“In the Studio” at TechCrunch TV this week welcomes a former California resident and current investor back to the west coast, where he and his partners have embarked on a new journey to build out a physical presence in Silicon Valley and San Francisco for one of the most dynamic business groups in the world.
Ajay Agarwal, a managing director with Bain Capital Ventures (BCV), is leading the charge of building his firm’s west coast offices and unveiling a brand new $600m fund, announced a few weeks ago in The New York Times. That’s a whole lot of money to invest in new consumer, enterprise, and mobile opportunities. This is sort of a personal homecoming for Agarwal, who went to Stanford years ago as a undergraduate computer science student and founded a company while he was in school. Now, after nearly ten years with Bain Capital in Boston, he’s leading his team here in California, comprised of Sahil Gupta, Indy Guha, and Adam Marchick, as it it were a startup, too.
Click And Mortar: Zynga Signs Deal With Hasbro For Real-World Toys and Games
Mobile app developer Rovio has famously turned its Angry Birds game into a popular toy franchise, but most other new-fangled gaming companies haven’t spent much energy going this route. But now social gaming leader Zynga is, per a big licensing deal with Hasbro
Music Labels’ Joint Venture, VEVO, Shows Pirated NFL Game At Sundance
Over the last decade the major music labels — and their trade organization, the Recording Industry Association of America — have established a repeated pattern of attacking consumers in the name of squelching illegal file-sharing. Piracy, they claim, has been the industry’s undoing, accounting for an over 50% drop in sales since 1999 (the industry likes to discount the impact of legal per-song music downloads via services like iTunes, and the myriad other changes facilitated by the rise of high-speed Internet connections).
Their efforts to combat piracy are often draconian: threatening tens of thousands of people with lawsuits claiming obscenely high damages; attempting to coordinate their threats with consumers’ ISPs; and, most recently, supporting legislation like SOPA and PIPA that would undermine the fabric of the Internet. Hell, Universal once pulled down a 30 second YouTube video of a dancing baby because the baby had the audacity to dance to a Prince song.
Which is why my jaw dropped when I saw that VEVO, a property jointly owned by some of the biggest record labels in the world, was showing a pirated stream of an ESPN football game at its Sundance PowerStation venue last month — on no fewer than two televisions, and a pair of laptops.
You Can Buy Me Love, But Please Don’t Buy Me Gadgets
Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and the majority of us are likely scrambling to find that special gift. (The rest of us, meanwhile, are cursing couples.) A Valentine’s Day gift is usually more important than others because it’s a one-on-one situation, unlike Christmas or birthdays. Just one gift, to just one person — and it better be good.
With that in mind, I’d like to address an article out of AllThingsD this morning that sourced information from PriceGrabber’s Valentine’s Day Dashboard Report. The report took information from February 4 through February 5, finding that various tablets, TVs and phones are hot items for gift-crazed Valentines.
The information itself isn’t that intriguing, but it did get me thinking about handing out gadgetry as a gift.
The Google+ Platform Roadmap From Director Of Engineering David Glazer
It won’t stop with Google Search Plus Your World. When asked if we should expect more integrations of Google+ into Google products, G+ director of engineering David Glazer said at today’s Inside Social Apps 2012 conference, ”Yes, where it’s good for the user. I think there’s more places to make people happy by showing them content they care about.” At the first major speaking engagement about its social network, Glazer also discussed user acquisition, monetization, and support for brands.
AT&T, Google Among The Biggest Online Advertisers — comScore
As part of its 2012 US Digital Future in Focus whitepaper, comScore looked at the online ad landscape and found a mix of old and new names. The report includes a list of the top 10 display advertisers in the United States (all of this data is US-only), as measured by impressions. As in previous years, AT&T topped the list, but there’s a newcomer — Google, which delivered 40.4 billion ads for products like Chrome, Google Offers, and Google+.
Large brand advertising on the Internet is growing in general, comScore says. To quantify that, it measured the number of advertisers delivering at least 1 billion impressions per quarter. There were 145 advertisers in that league during the final quarter of 2011, up 38 percent from the same period in 2010.
100 Million Americans Watch Online Video Per Day, Up 43% Since 2010 -comScore
Television is in trouble. Americans streamed 43.5 billion videos in December 2011, up 44% since December 2010, according to comScore’s 2012 US Digital Future In Focus report released today. The study also showed that 105.1 million Americans now watch videos online each day, up 43% from 73.7 million in 2010.
comScore says YouTube is largely driving this, and that average minutes per video view, average videos watched per user, and total ads streamed are way up as well. TV and film studios should take notice and consider how they can create companion content to engage this growing audience.
Glancee: A Nice-Guy Ambient Social Location App For Normal People
Some of us can’t be bothered to check in, but still want to find interesting people nearby. The challenge for developers is how to do this in a way that is both useful and not creepy. Glancee, available for both iOSAndroid, gets closer to solving these problems than most I’ve seen.
The app lets you sign in with Facebook, then it shows you people within 100 yards, or one, two, or ten miles who have things in common. In some ways this sounds similar another app I recently covered, Highlight — but there are key differences, that will make each app appeal to different sets of users.
posted 3 hours agoPixloo Helps You Sell Your Home With Free Virtual Tours, Exports To Zillow, Trulia & More
In December, Eric covered Open Home Pro, a startup that lets realtors sell homes via their iPads. Today, there comes a similar effort from Pixloo, except this service is designed for use by anyone – realtors and homeowners alike. With Pixloo, you can upload information about your home, including text, photos and even videos and then immediately export that data to major real estate sites including Trulia, Zillow, Realtor.com and others, all for free.
Avast, Me Hearties: How The Pirate Bay Changed The Way We Steal
The Pirate Bay, in many ways, is disappearing. It is one of the most popular torrent sites on the web and its database of millions of torrent files – essentially pointers to pieces of files hosted elsewhere – has long been the go-to spot for budding pirates around the world. While it still exists in spirit, the admins are now moving all of the torrent files off the site and are instead offering magnet links. This is an important distinction that will move the locus of general piracy from a single site to any number of sites, reducing the Pirate Bays importance as a source.
Cinemagram Turns iPhone Photos Into Animated Gifs In Seconds
Remember when the iPhone app GLMPS launched last summer, seemingly heralding the start of a new image format that blended static photos and video? No? That’s OK. Today, there’s a new twist on the idea of reinventing the mobile photo, this time by turning static photos into animated ones. With the newly launched app called Cinemagram, you can turn your iPhone pics into animated gifs in a matter of seconds.
posted 5 hours agoGoogle, Microsoft Search Queries Grow In January While Yahoo Continues To Slide
comScore has released its ‘explicit’ U.S. search data for January of this year and while Google and Microsoft Bring’s search share continues to grow, Yahoo’s share dropped both year over year and month over month. This comes after Bing overtook Yahoo in terms of search queries for the first time in December. While Bing grew slightly from December 2011 to January, Google reached its highest share since December 2010 this past month.
Google search queries increased 6% year over year in January, to 66.2%, compared with 65.9% in December 2011 and 65.6% in January 2011. Bing queries increased 21% year over year in January to 15.2%, compared with 15.1% in December 2011 and 13.1% in January 2011. Yahoo queries are on a downward spiral, decreasing 8% year over year in January to 14.1%, compared with 14.5% in December 2011, 15.1% in November 2011 and 16.1% in January 2011. Yikes.
posted 6 hours agoFab.com Rolls Out New Mobile Apps With Browse By Color & “Fab Shops”
After hitting 2 million members at the end of last month, design shopping startup Fab.com is today rolling out new iOS applications that offer a number of new features and improvements. In addition to an updated layout, search and navigational elements, one of the apps’ biggest new features is the inclusion of the recently launched new storefronts called “Fab Shops.”
posted 6 hours agoYouTube’s Latest Original Programming: Olympic-Style Lightsaber Relays
Here’s a fun example of the original programming that YouTube is supposed to be investing in these days — a relay from Santa Monica to San Diego. With lightsabers.
Geek celebrity Chris Hardwick is announcing the event, dubbed Course of the Force, on the YouTube blog. Hardwick hosts the popular Nerdist podcast, and he plans to launch a Nerdist YouTube channel in April,which he says will include “Neil Patrick Harris, Rob Zombie, Awkward Family Videos, The Dudesons and The Kids in the Hall,” plus more programming that covers “gaming, science, tech and cosplay.”
posted 6 hours agoKodak Shutters Digital Camera Business In Favor Of Licensing, Photo Printing
Consider today the end of an era for one of the most iconic brands in the imaging industry. While their bankruptcy protection filing from last month signaled the need for some drastic action, it’s still a bit of a shock to see Kodak announce that they are putting all of their digital cameras, camcorders, and picture frames out to pasture
When all is said and done, Kodak expects annual operating savings of around $100 million, but the bigger loss is going to be that of a cultural icon. Kodak will still exist, sure, but primarily as a purveyor of desktop printers as well as online and retail photo printing services.
posted 6 hours agoShopzilla Founder Launches Cheers: The “Like Button” For The World Around You
The “toast” is an age-old, time-honored tradition, where we raise a glass to pay tribute to — and express our goodwill towards — friends, loved ones, and sometimes even our fellow man. They are even known to be meaningfully punctuated with by a good drinking song or two. And now, thanks to BizRate.com and Shopzilla Founder Farhad Mohit, there is, as they say, an app for that expression of goodwill. Yes, “cheers” is no longer simply a word that accompanies toasts — or the place where everyone knows your name — it’s also the “world’s first positivity app,” for the iPhone.
posted 6 hours agoposted 7 hours ago- Here are the PSP games that will work on Vita at launch
- Super Mario Bros. Crossover version 2 mashes up Mario worlds
- Wii U getting Toki Tori 2 digitally, says Two Tribes
- Jaffe outlines plans post-Eat Sleep Play; no Twisted Metal DLC or sequel planned
- Super Meat Boy to be torn apart, rebuilt for touchscreen devices
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09 Feb ' 07:34
posted 7 mins agoNielsen:CordCuttingAndInternetTVViewingOnTheRise
According to a new report from Nielsen, the number of U.S. homes that have broadband Internet, but only free, broadcast TV, is on the rise. Although representing less than 5% of TV households, the number has grown 22.8% over the past year.
In addition, the behaviors within these homes are unique. These broadband/broadcast-only households stream video twice as much as the general population, says Nielsen, and they watch half as much TV.
posted 22 mins agoProtesters March Toward Apple Stores On The Heels Of A Foxconn Hack
It would seem that representatives from Change.org and SumOfUs.org have organized a global protest against Apple’s use of Foxconn and other Chinese manufacturing plants to build the iPhone and iPad.
This comes on the heels of a New York Times series exposing harsh working conditions in said plants. 250,000 people have signed petitions calling for a “worker protection strategy”, which will today be delivered to Apple stores in a number of major cities, including New York.
posted 33 mins agoAppcelerator Acquires Mobile Cloud Services Startup Cocoafish
Appcelerator, the company behind the popular Titanium app-building platform, is announcing its third acquisition today. The company is buying Cocoafish, a mobile app infrastructure provider that lets developers add various features to apps including messaging capabilities, push notifications, photo uploads, checkins and other social features, storage, discussion forums and more. Although the name implies an iOS affiliation, Cocoafish is actually a cross-platform backend service provider supporting iOS, Android, and even Flash and Ruby.
posted 35 mins agoBoardProspects Wants To Help Companies ‘Build Better Boards’, Raises $650,000
Don’t you just hate when you’re out skateboarding, minding your own business, and suddenly one of the wheels comes off and you break a kneecap? Well now there’s a new startup called BoardProspects, which aims to help companies build better boards. A quick glance at their website reveals that the company is not going to be able to solve your skateboarding woes, however, but it may help your business roll more smoothly.
If your company is in need of new members for the board of directors (cough Yahoo cough) or the advisory board (cough Honeywell cough), you may want to give Boston-based BoardProspects’ upcoming offering a second look.
posted 54 mins agoTrion Worlds Brings Rift To China
Game-maker Trion Worlds is revealing its global ambitions — it just announced a partnership with Chinese Internet company Shanda to release Trion’s online roleplaying game Rift in China.
The game had a successful launch in the United States and Europe last year, supposedly bringing in $100 million in revenue. Trion CEO Lars Buttler says he sees Asia as the company’s “next great frontier,” one that he plans to conquer through the Shanda deal and another partnership to launch in Korea. In fact, Buttler says that across most financial metrics, the new agreement is the largest deal ever to license a Western game in China. (However, he declined to share those metrics.)
posted 1 hour agoReport: Apple To Announce The iPad 3 The First Week Of March
Shocking news of the day: Apple is preparing to announce the iPad 3. Crazy news, I know. That announcement, if AllThingsD is to be believed, should come in the first week of March. The next-gen tablet itself is reportedly an upgraded version of the iPad 2, featuring a dual-core CPU and a higher-resolution display. But then again, that’s to be expected. Of course the iPad 3 will have better specs than the year-old iPad 2.
posted 2 hours agoWaze Lets You Report Traffic With A Wave Of Your Hand
If you’re one of the 12 million drivers who use real-time traffic data from Waze, there’s a drawback — the smartphone app depends on users to collect traffic data, but if a driver is stuck in traffic or spots an accident, that’s exactly when they shouldn’t be fiddling with their phone. That’s why the Kleiner Perkins-backed startup developed a new voice interface, which it’s launching today.
Michal Habdank-Kolaczkowski, the company’s director of communications, recently demonstrated the new controls for me. The demo took place in the TechCrunch office, rather than a moving car, but I still think Waze has come up with a pretty elegant solution. Habdank-Kolaczkowski showed off reporting traffic to Waze with just a couple of voice commands — “report traffic”, then, when prompted to choose from different traffic levels, he said, “moderate.”
posted 2 hours agoSocialbakers Brings Its Leading European Social Analytics Platform To The U.S.
With more companies vying for the attention of customers on social media channels, content producers, marketers and more are always looking for ways to better track the engagement and reach of their social media footprints — across the globe. Socialbakers, a young startup founded in 2009 has emerged as one of the leading social analytics platforms in Europe. Since raising $2 million in September from Earlybird Capital Ventures and breaking into the black, the startup has turned its sights to the U.S., becoming the exclusive analytics partner with Facebook and others to provide social media analytics throughout the presidential campaign.
posted 2 hours agoMeundies Wants To Send You A New Pair Of Underwear Every Month
In the same space as other “get random stuff sent to you” startups (but especially Manpacks) Meundies launches today to bring users high quality underwear choices in a month to month subscription model.
The Meundies onboarding process basically functions like that of Stylemint, where users select the styles and colors they like and the startup provides them with personalized choices, for $16 a month per item in addition to free shipping and returns. Members have the option of skipping a month or putting their membership on pause during the first five days of each month. Members can also cancel their membership at any time without penalty.
posted 2 hours agoInfogr.am Gets HackFwd Backing To Democratize Cool Info-graphics
European accelerator HackFwd just announced that Infogr.am from Riga in Latvia as its latest investment. Infogr.am’s product is gunning to be a kind of Adobe Illustrator for online, allowing anyone to create cool info-graphics. The web-based application needs no programming or design skills, and works in the same way that you can snap a photo and share it on your social networks. Users make a statement or an argument graphically and then share it. An infographic can be embedded on a page or shared as a link or an image directly.
posted 2 hours agoAmazon Plays The Price Card In The Battle Against iPads
Amazon used to be able to sell the Kindle based on its readability in sunlight. That’s a fair comparison to make and the old advertising featured little more than people being happy reading. To wit:
posted 2 hours agoModo Labs Brings A New Mobile Platform To College Campuses
I remember my freshman year of college. It was a tiny campus, but I still found myself looking for classes and wandering through a maze-like library for most of the first year I was there. At the time, my phone wasn’t much help to me, but now that smartphones are taking over the market, Modo Labs is ready to help college students spend even more time on fiddling around on their phones.
The company today made the latest version of its Mobile Campus Solution available, which is meant to give Universities the ability to create a mobile platform for their students. The platform will work on mobile web, iOS, and Android, just to make sure no one’s left out.
posted 2 hours agoGerman Court Upholds Previous Ruling, Says The Reworked Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1N Can Be Sold
Mark one up for Samsung. After months of legal and PR battles, the South Korean company is finally able to sell and market their iPad clone in Germany. Just don’t call it an iPad clone anymore. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1N (pictured left) is slightly different from the iPad — but that’s all that matters.
Samsung released the Galaxy Tab 10.1N late last year. This version features a silver boarder around the screen’s black bezel. The speakers were also relocated in a stereo configuration and now flank the screen. The original GalTab 10.1 was a blatant iPad ripoff. This version at least looks slightly different.
posted 2 hours agoOracle Buys Talent Management Solutions Company Taleo For $1.9 Billion
Oracle this morning announced that it is acquiring cloud-based talent management solutions provider Taleo for $46 per share or roughly $1.9 billion, net of Taleo’s cash and debt. Taleo’s solutions basically help organizations attract, motivate and retain human capital, and will serve to boost Oracle’s Public Cloud offering.
posted 3 hours agoGlam Media Cooks Up Newest Content Vertical With Foodie.com
Glam Media, one of the largest publishing and advertising networks on the Web, is debuting its newest branded vertical—Foodie.com. As its name indicates, Glam’s newest vertical is aimed at covering all things food, and features a combination of content from food critics, bloggers, chefs, restaurateurs and other “food influentials.”
For background, Glam’s various publishing verticals have a reach of 200 million unique monthly visitors globally, and is particularly popular amongst female audiences. Glam Media has more than 2,500 publishers organized across multiple vertical categories online including Glam.com for Women, Glam Entertainment for Adults, Brash.com for Men and Bliss.com for health and wellness. Glam also announced the acquisition of Ning in September.
posted 3 hours agoClusterpoint Secures €1m From BaltCap To Scale Its Database For Clouds
BaltCap, a leading venture investor in startups in the Baltics region, has signed a €1 million investment in Clusterpoint, an enterprise software startup created by Latvian programmers and backed by seed investors in the UK and Baltics. Clusterpoint has built a database platform designed for cloud computing infrastructure which they claim is highly scalable. They are competing against open source solutions such as MongoDB.
posted 4 hours agoLive from Riga – TechCrunch Baltics meetup #TCBaltics
We’re running the first ever TechCrunch Baltics meetup today with a mini-conference and pitch contest in the lovely city of Riga, Latvia. The Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are tiny countries, but punch above their weight in terms of their technical prowess. Estonia in particular was made famous as being the base from which Skype was developed, and now the rest of the region is coming alive with startups and accelerators. You can find the agenda here. Up to 8 selected Baltic startups will pitch to a jury and audience that includes many key investors in the region and beyond. We also have a dedicated twitter account @TCBaltics and the hashtag is #TCBaltics. Check out the live stream on this post:
posted 5 hours agoMontblanc Takes Google To Court To Obtain Identity Of, And Sue, Counterfeit Advertisers
Google has been going to great lengths to keep advertisers who sell counterfeit goods online out of its AdWords program, but as far as Montblanc, the Germany-based maker of ‘writing instruments’, watches, jewelry and whatnot, is concerned, they ought to be doing more.
Montblanc-Simplo GmbH, as the holding is called, is taking Google to court in an effort to obtain the identity of a certain – or more – persistent counterfeit goods seller(s).
TechCrunch has obtained the court documents, which make for an interesting read.
(More after the jump)
Acetylon Pharmaceuticals — Received $15M in Unattributed funding from CelgeneTaleoOracle Corporation for $1.9B.2.9.2012TaleoOracle Corporation for $1.9B.2.9.20122.9.2012Acetylon Pharmaceuticals — Received $15M in Unattributed funding from Celgene2.9.2012Docebo — Received €2.4M in Unattributed funding from Principia SGR2.9.20122.9.2012Access Media 3 — Received $30M in Unattributed funding from ORIX Venture FinancePetra Capital Partners2.9.2012Real Matters — Received C$22M in Unattributed funding2.9.20122.9.20122.9.20122.9.20122.9.20122.9.2012 -
09 Feb ' 02:00
posted yesterdayAnalytics Dashboard Netvibes Sold To Dassault Systèmes
Netvibes has just been acquired by European product design company Dassault Systèmes (sure this isn’t the type of thing I usually write, but I like the founder Tariq Krim so bear with me here … ).
French startup Netvibes is an analytics dashboard that allows Fortune 500 companies to track their social media presence throughout the realtime web. Dassault is a “3D experience “design company so the acquisition actually seems jarring at first, but Netvibes CEO Freddy Mini tells me that the acquisition actually makes sense in terms of connecting what people say about a company to the design process through the Netvibes dashboard.
Doug Ludlow, Contributorposted yesterdayHipster CEO Also Apologizes For Address Book-Gate, Calls For “Application Privacy Summit” [Guest Post]
The following is a guest post from Hipster CEO Doug Ludlow, following yesterday and today’s revelations that select apps were uploading user’s entire address books to their database.
posted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayProlexic Technologies — Received $8M in Series B funding from Camden Partners2.9.2012Prolexic Technologies — Received $8M in Series B funding from Camden PartnersPaddle8 — Received $4M in Series A funding from Founder CollectivetimeRAZOR — Received $3.4M in Angel funding2.9.20122.9.20122.9.20122.9.20122.9.20122.8.2012- EU could lose tax breaks for game developers, threatens talent exodus
- Halo: Archetype fan-film teaser introduces the first Spartan
- PS3 PlayMemories video editing app is part of a PC/mobile suite, includes 5GB of storage
- Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 gets Weapon Expert costume pack, including Mega Man X
- Double Fine returning to its adventure game roots with Kickstarter project [update: 315K down!]
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08 Feb ' 20:10
posted 44 mins agoIs A Hash Of Hash Of A Torrent Of A Torrent Of Copyrighted Data Copyrighted?
Let’s try to parse this.
Pirate Bay (.se) user allisfine just recently uploaded a torrent to the site that is a collection of all the magnet identifiers for the entire site (actually, only about a quarter of the site, but all the publicly visible ones). That is to say, it is a list of the unique identifiers, cryptographic hashes, of every .torrent file on the site.
In a way, this torrent file, or indeed its magnet identifier (938802790a385c49307f34cca4c30f80b03df59c), contains millions or billions of dollars worth of pirated content. Or does it?
Stealthy Startup timeRAZOR Raises $3.4M Pre-Launch, Partners With Major Household Brands
Got FOMO? (That’s “fear of missing out” for those of you who don’t do slang.) There will soon be an app for that, or so says the $3.4 million in angel funding the stealthy D.C.-area startup called timeRAZOR has raised. In its pre-launch state, the curious company is already lining up brand partnerships with big names like Marriott and L’Oreal in preparation for its March debut.
But what the heck is a timeRAZOR?
posted 2 hours agoFounder Collective Makes A $4 Million Bet On Paddle8′s Online Marketplace For Fine Art
When it comes to a marketplace for fine art, a space which seems to intrinsically resist digital services, technology really hasn’t had quite the same disruptive influence it has in so many others. Startups like Zazzle and Art.com have taken steps to make art commercial and broadly accessible, with some cool technology to boot, but automation and democratization haven’t really penetrated the upper crust world of fine art in any significant way, for understandable reasons. Democratic luxury sounds like an oxymoron, or phony marketing.
posted 2 hours agoFYI. Dave Morin Didn’t Lie To Gawker About Path Storing User Data
Some people always see the good in people and some people always see the bad … Gawker just published a post with what at first seems to be some pretty damning evidence against Path founder Dave Morin, publishing an email where he assured writer Ryan Tate that Path wasn’t storing user data.
While today’s headlines would lead one to believe that that statement was a lie, Morin (who is a friend) tells me that the exchange is misleading. He was actually talking about Path 1.0 in the exchange, which lacked the “Add Friends” feature, and there for did not store data.
DeNA Has Big Quarter, Acquiree Ngmoco:( Has Layoffs
Japanese mobile gaming giant DeNA bought mobile app developer Ngmoco last year for $400 million. Since then, the company has acquired a range of other outfits and worked to tie the San Francisco startup in with everything else it does.
In general, things seem to be going well. The conglomerate just posted a strong third quarter, with net sales up 16%, which in turn boosted the stock price by more than 8% for a valuation of $4.8 billion. However, net income declined versus the same period the previous year, from $106 million to $79.2 million.
Lytro Teardown Shows Potential Wireless Capability, Smallish Sensor
It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about Lytro (other than nearly grabbing a Crunchie (I voted for them)), the camera where you shoot now and focus later. And the latest news comes not from the company itself, but from the FCC, which just today published the internal photos from its investigation of the device.
Like reading about chips and sensors? Click on.
Keith Teare, ContributorAddressgate: After The Path Fallout, Whose Address Book Is It Anyway?
Addressgate seems like an appropriate name for what is dominating Silicon Valley headlines: Path’s mobile app uploading all of your contacts. Today Michael Arrington suggested that Path delete the data gathered and start over, and now Path CEO and founder Dave Morin has decided to do just that, and apologized.
The past 24 hours of discussion has mainly been characterized by shock, horror or forgiveness. Although all well-intentioned none of these get to the heart of a very significant issue that will only get more important as the mobile and cloud architecture of consumer apps replaces the desktop and cloud combination that has characterized the past 10 years of web services. Beneath the drama there are some big issues. Here I want to try and surface them.
Here’s What Facebook Stock Looks Like
In a few months time, here’s what the world will be fighting to get its hands on, or get rid of depending on your confidence in Facebook’s business plan. The image of a Facebook stock certificate was included in the amended S-1 Facebook filed today with the SEC. It’s sure to become coveted by Scripophiliacs, or people who collect historic stock certificates, along with those from Google, Apple, and Pixar pictured within.
posted 5 hours agoAndrew Mason’s First Earnings Call: “Stop Sending Me Pole-Dancing Deals”
Groupon CEO Andrew Mason just finished his first post-IPO earnings calls with Wall Street analysts. (We covered it live and looked at the numbers). “We believe we are on the cusp of a sea change” in behavior, he noted. “We’re about to see what technology can do for local commerce.”
Listening to the call, I’d say his performance was mixed. He sounded a little nervous at first, but warmed up to the task just as he did during the IPO roadshow, joking with the analysts that one of the most requested features Groupon hears from customers to “stop sending me pole-dancing deals.”
posted 5 hours agoFacebook As A Mobile Platform: 60 Million Mobile Users Visit Third-Party Apps Each Month
Facebook is huge on mobile — as an application developer. But questions have circled for years around how it can be a real mobile platform on top of operating systems controlled by Apple and Google. But we got a little more data on what it’s already accomplishing on the platform front, today at the Inside Social Apps conference here in San Francisco.
posted 5 hours agoGumroad Gets $1.1 Million From Chris Sacca, Max Levchin And Others To Turn Any Link Into A Payment System
Gumroad, the buzzy one-man startup launched by Pinterest and Turntable app designer (and 19-year-old college dropout) Sahil Lavingia, officially launches today with over $1.1 million in seed funding from investors Accel Partners, Chris Sacca, Max Levchin, SV Angel,Josh Kopelman, Seth Goldstein, Naval Ravikrant, Collaborative Fund and Danny Rimer.
posted 6 hours agoNokia Cuts 4000 Jobs; Last European Phone Assembly Work Goes To Asia
It’s a sign of the times, though not a particularly surprising one: Nokia has finally eliminated its European phone assembly infrastructure and will be moving those 4000 jobs to Asia, according to a Reuters report. The factories are not being shuttered altogether, and localizing and finishing work will still be done there, but the primary assembly work is being relocated.
The news and layoffs were expected, as the company has slashed many more thousands of jobs over the last year, but this particular cut is symbolic: the intensely European company has been battered into submission, and will join the others in the now-standard configuration of “design here, build there.”
posted 6 hours agoFoursquare Rolls Out New Version Of “Explore” On Mobile With Filters & Improved Search
This morning, Foursquare launched an updated version of its “Explore” feature for both its and applications. The new version brings over several of the features already available through Foursquare on the web, including filters, photos in search results and the ability to change your location.
posted 6 hours agoFacebook’s Amended S-1 Exhibits Zynga Agreement Filed Last Year
Facebook has just filed an amendment to its S-1 that exhibits the agreements between it and Zynga. These 2 developeragreement documents are the same as those filed in Zynga’s own S-1 amendment from last year and don’t include significant new information.
The exhibits do spell out how Facebook has promised to help Zynga with advertising on Zynga sites such as FarmVille.com, and share revenue from such a partnership. This should not be confused to mean sharing ad revenue from Zynga’s games on Facebook.com. Facebook also included its 2005 stock plan, and employment letters to key executives.
posted 6 hours agoNest Labs Responds To Honeywell Lawsuit, Says It Has The Resources To Defend Itself
Nest is ready to fight. The Palo Alto company just issued a followup statement regarding Honeywell’s recent patent infringement suit
In short they’re not going to roll over. They’re going to stand tall. The plan is to “vigorously defend itself” from what they call an attempt to stifle “thoughtful competition.” Nice. Go get ‘em, boys.
posted 6 hours agoYou will have until February 12th, this coming Sunday, to win the Xbox Kinect and you will have until next Friday, February 17th to win the Samsung Galaxy S II. You can enter both giveaways. For all of the husbands/ wives, boyfriends/ girlfriends, and significant others out there, this is just in time for Valentine’s Day.
posted 6 hours agoposted 7 hours agoGroupon just announced its first earnings report after last October (it missed, read our liveblog of the earnings call here.). For the full year, Groupon’s revenues were $1.6 billion, up 419 percent. The daily deal company, however, lost $350 million, most of that attributable to its very aggressive international expansion (7,000 out of its 10,000 employees are overseas). In North America, it turned an operating profit of $22 million, which was counteracted by $137 million in international operating losses.
posted 7 hours agoposted 7 hours ago- Funding Rounds
- Investments
SchoolFeed — Received $1.75M in Seed funding from First Round Capital, Crosslink Capital, InterWest Partners, and SK Telecom VenturesCrosslink Capital — Invested in SchoolFeedSchoolFeed — Received $1.75M in Seed funding from First Round Capital, Crosslink Capital, InterWest Partners, and SK Telecom Ventures2.8.2012Lucid Energy Group — Received $75M in Unattributed funding from EnCap Flatrock Midstream2.8.2012Pasteurization Technology Group — Received $1M in Unattributed funding from EIC Ventures2.8.2012Velomedix — Received $10.2M in Series B funding2.8.2012Blip.tv — Received $12M in Unattributed funding from Bain Capital Ventures, Canaan Partners, and Silicon Valley Bank2.8.2012Crosslink Capital — Invested in SchoolFeed.2.8.2012SK Telecom Ventures — Invested in SchoolFeed.2.8.2012First Round Capital — Invested in SchoolFeed.2.8.2012InterWest Partners — Invested in SchoolFeed.2.8.2012EnCap Flatrock Midstream — Invested in Lucid Energy Group.2.8.20122.8.20122.8.20122.8.20122.8.20122.8.2012- Official Monopoly: World of Warcraft game to be unveiled next week
- Daily iPad App: Tweetbot emerges as a top Twitter client for the iPad
- AT&T and Verizon lobby for less FCC spectrum control, Sprint and other carriers respond
- You’re the Pundit: Does a 7" iPad make sense for the education market?
- Spiritual Guidance: Diagnosing bad shadow priest DPS
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08 Feb ' 13:56
posted 3 mins agoTechCrunch Giveaway: Xbox Kinect AND A Samsung Galaxy S II
Thanks to our friends at Antengo, who absolutely love the TechCrunch readers, we have two huge prizes to give away this week: an Xbox Kinect and a Samsung Galaxy S II. There will be two winners for this giveaway and two ways to win for each prize.
You will have until February 19th, this coming Sunday, to win the Xbox Kinect and you will have until this Friday, February 17th to win the Samsung Galaxy S II. You can enter both giveaways. For all of the husbands/ wives, boyfriends/ girlfriends, and significant others out there, this is just in time for Valentine’s Day.
posted 8 mins agoTechmeme Aims For Community Aggregation With A Big New Tech Event Calendar
As part of news aggregator Techmeme‘s big redesign a couple weeks ago, it moved its flow of top stories to the left to make room for… white space. But founder Gabe Rivera promised at the time that there’d be stuff coming to fill it, and now we know what — an events calendar for the tech world.
posted 21 mins agoGroupon Ends The Year With $1.6 Billion In Revenues, Up 419 Percent
Groupon just announced its first report after going public last October. For the full year, Google’s revenues were $1.6 billion, up 419 percent. The daily deal company, however, lost $350 million, most of that attributable to its very aggressive international expansion (7,000 out of its 10,000 employees are overseas). In North America, it turned an operating profit of $22 million, which was counteracted by $137 million in international operating losses.
For the quarter, revenues were $506 million, up 194 percent. The net loss was $42.7 million, which at least was down from $379 million quarterly net loss the year before. We’ll be doing our liveblog of the earnings call here.
posted 26 mins agoGroupon Misses Earnings Estimates (Liveblog)
Groupon just announced its first earnings since its IPO in November. For the fourth quarter of 2011, it reported revenue of $506.5 million, beating analyst estimates of $473 million. It’s also profitable, with net income of $15 million.
However, Groupon came up short on earnings per share, coming in at negative $0.02, rather than the positive $0.03 EPS that analysts were expecting. (That number includes a $0.07 cent tax from international operations.) As result, at 4:20pm Eastern, Groupon was down 11.3 percent in after-hours trading.
posted 29 mins agoTripAdvisor Q4 Revenue Up 30 Percent To $137.8M; Net Income Up 19 Percent In First Quarter As A Public Company
After spinning off from Expediadebuting on the NASDAQ in December, trip reviews site TripAdvisor posted fourth quarter 2011 revenues of $137.8 million, a 30% increase over fourth quarter 2010. Full year 2011 revenues were $637.1 million, a 31% increase over full year 2010. Fourth quarter 2011 GAAP earnings per share ) was $0.16 per diluted share compared to $0.14 for the fourth quarter 2010. Net income was $22 million, a 19% increase over fourth quarter 2010.
TripAdvisor, which was founded in 2000, was originally bought by IAC in for $212 million in 2004. IAC spun off Expedia, which included TripAdvisor, in 2005. With 50 million unique monthly visitors and 20 million members, TripAdvisor is the giant in the travel reviews space. The site publishes 25 new contributions every minute and also features over eight million candid traveler photos. The reviews site operates in 30 different countries, including in China under the site Daodao.
posted 47 mins agoGoogle Offers To Pay People To Have Their Web Use Tracked Minutely
Some people might say that there’s no way Google could be more aware of your browsing habits. Not true! There is much they don’t know. But it’s not because they don’t want to know.
Last night Google rolled out two programs aimed at increasing their awareness of how people use their browsers — what sites they visit, for how long, for what purpose, etc. They’ll pay you for the privilege, a bit like being a Nielsen family. They even give you a little box!
posted 49 mins agoEyeing An IPO, HubSpot Adds Akamai’s CFO And Former IBM Exec JD Sherman As COO
Marketing software company HubSpot has brought on a new leader today—Akamai CFO JD Sherman. Sherman has been chief financial officer at Akamai for over 6 years.
Prior to Akamai, Sherman served as the chief financial executive of IBM’s $21 billion Systems and Technology Group. Over the course of 15 years at IBM, Sherman held senior executive positions in Finance, including Vice President, Finance and Planning, zSeries Server Division, and Assistant Controller of IBM Corporate Financial Strategy and Budgets.
Study:iPhoneResaleValue63%AfterOneYear,Android46%
All smartphones do not depreciate equally. 18 months after purchase, iPhones can be sold for 53% of their original price, while Androids can only be sold for 42% and BlackBerries for 41% on average according to a study by Y Combinator second-hand price guide startup Priceonomics. The study also offered tips on memory upgrades and models for maximizing your phone’s resale value.
Thismoment Acquires Position2, Becomes Full Service Promotion Engine
You’d be excused for not paying much attention to Thismoment or Position2. They do the dirty work a lot of entrepreneurs don’t want to do, namely run marketing promotions and, in their wake, figuring out how many people actually paid attention to those things. In a world of “organic eyeballs” and viral va-va-voom, there’s little place for Mad Men style commercial promotion… or is there?
Thismoment just paid an undisclosed sum for Position2 and will begin folding Position2′s technology into its offerings. Thismoment began life as a photo-sharing site (“It was Facebook Timeline before Facebook timeline,” said founder Vince Broady) and pivoted do supply content management tools for major brands.
posted 1 hour agoPath: We’ve Deleted All Address Book Data
It looks like Path has heeded the words of investor Michael Arrington.
Yesterday, the startup faced a major privacy backlash when it was revealed that the social app was uploading user’s address book data without actually telling the user. Co-founder and CEO Dave Morin was apologetic, and there was a lot of argument about how big a deal this was (especially since the practice was in-line with Apple’s policies), but Arrington had a simpler suggestion: “Just nuke all the data.”
posted 1 hour agoSkimlinks Is The Real Story Behind Pinterest’s Success
I love it when a startup I’ve been covering for literally years suddenly finds itself in the spotlight, and for the right reasons. In this case, Skimlinks, originally from London but now with a growing US base, has been revealed as powering the affiliate links behind Pinterest, one of the hottest startups on the map right now. For some that appears to be a little bit of scandal, at least for Pinterest, though not for Skimlinks.
UPDATE: Executives Of Swedish Start-Up Klarna Arrested For Alleged Molestation
Details are sparse and we have calls in, but the two execs at Klarna, Jens Saltin and Niklas Adalberth, were arrested at the W Hotel in New York for alleged molestation. The victim was a 19-year-old tourist from Texas.
Saltin and Adalberth are currently out on $10,000 bail. According to the NY Post, “Adalberth allegedly straddled her body while he and Saltin ripped off her clothes and fondled her.”
Tech Blog GigaOm Acquires Media-Focused Site paidContent
Hot off the press release presses: tech blog GigaOm has acquired paidContent (and parent company ContentNext) from The Guardian. Rumors of the acquisition were first reported by Peter Kafka at AllThingsD.
Wrote GigaOm founder Om Malik in a blog post:
Sprint Lost A Lot Of Money Selling Lots Of iPhones
Call it a sort of a bear hug: Sprint, the also-ranniest of the also-rans in the carrier world, lost money selling phones that, on the aggregate gained them subscribers. It’s also Catch-22, a blindside, and a mess.
According to Sprint, the company reported a net loss last quarter while still selling 1.8 million iPhones and increasing their subscriber base by 1.6 million. How? The costs associated with provisioning and supporting these new phones drove operating losses to $438 million, up from $139 million in Q4 last year.
Finnish Startup Ovelin Snags $1.4M From True Ventures To Reinvent Early Music Ed With Games
We first covered Finnish startup Ovelin back in June, when it was preparing for the release of its interactive, gamified app for the iPad that helps teach youngsters how to play the guitar, and having some fun while doing it. Like others before it, Ovelin’s mission is based on the fact that learning to play an instrument is challenging. The process is slow, and the exercises one has to go through — they don’t tell you about this in Rolling Stone — are boring and tedious. It’s for this reason that instrumental education is fraught with dropout, as many novice musicians end up retiring before they become shredders.
posted 3 hours agoFlurry: When The Super Bowl Bored Us, We Opened Apps
During the lackluster moments of this year’s Super Bowl, we turned to our second screens. A study released by Flurry today shows that during great ads and the half-time show we kept our devices stowed, but returns from commercial breaks, boring ads, and waning interest in the 3rd quarter caused spikes in mobile app usage.
This means advertisers and TV producers need to get flashier, because every viewer has a wildly engaging device in their pocket. Subtle, conservative, slow-building ads just don’t cut it any more.
Samsung Leads $23M Round In Data Storage Hardware Company Pivot3
Texas-based data storage company Pivot3 has raised $23 million in new funding led by Samsung Ventures, with all existing Pivot3 investors participating including Focus Ventures, InterWest Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mesirow Financial, Northleaf Capital Partners and Silver Creek Ventures. This brings Pivot3′s total funding to nearly $100 million.
Pivot3′s storage hardware appliances offer integrated server virtualization for data to enterprise customers. Its RAID-based solutions are generally used to store video surveillance data. The company has over 140 customers including Port of Seattle, the Mall of America, and the City of Trenton.
posted 3 hours agoMicrosoft To Launch Windows 8 Consumer Preview At MWC On February 29
While Samsung’s new low-key approach to MWC may have some gadget fans feeling blue, Microsoft’s plans for MWC just made things much more interesting. The company has begun to send out press invitations to an event at this year’s Mobile World Congress where they will officially launch the Windows 8 Consumer Preview.
Google Updates Chrome Browser, Now Offers Faster Browsing, Improved Security
Following yesterday’s release of the new mobile version of the Chrome browser, Google is today launching an improved version of its desktop counterpart. The updated release of Chrome (Stable version) brings several features beta users have had since January, most notably omnibox pre-rendering and increased security protections.
Thiel, Zuck, Conway To Select $100K TechFellow Awards Winners
The TechFellow Awards is the Oscars of high-tech entrepreneurship. As selection committee member Sean Parker puts it “We’re shining a spotlight on individuals who are on the cusp of bringing us something revolutionary.” On February 22nd at the SFMOMA, 20 innovators will be presented with $100,000 grants to invest in startups of their choice. Nominations are open through February 17th at the TechFellows website.
Today, the TechFellow Awards announced that Emmy-winning nerd hero Jim Parsons, star of hit tv show The Bing Bang Theory, will host the awards ceremony. Marissa Mayer, Dave McClure, and Terry Semel will also join the all-star selection committee, which includes Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Ron Conway.
- Protect your console from Reavers with the Mass Effect 3 Vault
- Skyrim goes Braveheart in amazing machinima video
- Ubi’s server migration closeouts extend beyond previously announced titles
- Skyrim’s Fall of the Space Core mod may be hiding a Portal 2 quest
- Fruit Ninja Kinect sells a half-million copies; Jetpack Joyride reaches 14 million downloads
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08 Feb ' 08:55
posted 51 mins agoPowerInbox, The Service That Turns Emails Into Apps, Launches API
PowerInbox, the email platform that lets you run apps for Facebook, Twitter, Groupon and Google+ inside your inbox, is today announcing the launching of its API. With this addition, companies that want to make their own emails interactive can now do so. Kicking off the launch, PowerInbox signed up ten partners who used the API to build email apps across several verticals including video, shopping, games and more.
posted 54 mins agoStealthy Legal Startup DocRun Raises $1.1M From Resolute.VC, Don Dodge And Others
A new legal startup is launching to the public soon, hoping to shake up the legal documents space. LA-based DocRun is announcing that it has raised $1.1 million in seed funding from VC Michael Hirshland’s new fund, Resolute.vc, Google’s Don Dodge, and Kima Ventures.
While some details of what DocRun is doing are still unclear, but we know the startup is trying to disrupt the online legal documents and advice space, but by adding quality, personalized documents to the mix as opposed to simply offering form contracts like LLC agreements, rental agreements and more. DocRun wants to provide highly customized, attorney-level, state-specific legal documents at a fraction of what they would cost from a lawyer.
posted 1 hour agoRockYou Cofounder Lance Tokuda Keeps It Old School With New Classmates Competitor SchoolFeed
Lance Tokuda was one of the masterminds behind viral apps on Facebook back at the end of last decade. He cofounded and led RockYou as its chief executive through the evolution of the Facebook platform, all the while inundating users with hugs, horoscopes, birthday cards and other lightweight social app communications (which some may refer to as “spam”).
RockYou ended up finding its business in social advertising and social gaming, and in late 2010 Tokuda stepped down from his CEO role. Now he’s back with a new company on Facebook today, called schoolFeed, that’s trying to connect older users with long-lost high school classmates.
posted 1 hour agoAmazon & Viacom Announce Streaming Video Deal
Proving the rumors right, Amazon today announced a video deal with Viacom, Inc. which will allow Amazon Prime members to instantly stream TV shows from MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, TV Land, Spike, VH1, BET, CMT and Logo. The deal increases the total number of Prime Instant Videos to more than 15,000, the company reports. In December, there were 13,000 movies and TV shows available, so it’s a moderate increase in terms of quantity, but a big step in terms of Amazon becoming a more viable Netflix competitor.
posted 2 hours agoThe Curious Vaporization Of Jesta Labs, A $15 Million Startup Incubator
Here’s a puzzler. Back in September 2011, less than 6 months ago, Jesta Digital loudly committed $15 million to establish Jesta Labs, a New York-based mobile services startup incubator. Fast forward to today, and the incubator has vanished from the face of the planet. Their website has been taken down, and we hear pretty much everyone who had anything to do with Jesta Labs has moved on.
posted 2 hours agoGoogle Ventures-Backed Nettle Wants To Make Watching Movies Social With MovieGoer
Nettle, a startup that has raised funding from Google Ventures, 500 Startups and others, is looking to make the act of going to the movies a more social experience. With the company’s free iOS app, MovieGoer, the startup wants to make the moviegoing experience more interactive.
The Moviegoer app allows you to view trailers, descriptions of the latest movies out in theaters and critics’ reviews. You can also see what movies are showing nearby your locations. Via the app, you can follow specific movies, sign in with Facebook and Twitter to see which movies your friends are going to, and comment on movies after viewing.
Akamai Acquires Website Performance Company Blaze Software
After scooping up rival Cotendo for $268 million recently, content delivery and web services giant Akamai is making another acquisition today—Blaze Software. Blaze’s technology helps accelerate speed of Websites, and optimizes load times while cutting bandwidth costs. Financial details of the dealn were not disclosed except that it was an all-cash transaction.
As Akamai explains, there are more performance bottlenecks for website load and speed times, as richer web applications and mobile web sites become more popular. Blaze’s cloud-based service automatically optimizes the code on a web page during the delivery process to ensure faster transmission of content and a faster rendering of the page, whether served to a PC, tablet or smartphone.
posted 3 hours agoBoxee Stands With The CEA Against Cable Companies, Courts The FCC Chairman To Stop Proposed Ruling
Anti-consumer legislation SOPA and PIPA might be all but dead, but there isn’t time to rest. There is a seemingly never-ending flow of proposed legislation, statutes and bills queued up, ready to bust down doors and storm living rooms. One of the latest involves the forced transition from analog to digital cable — something I wrote about back in 2008. If the FCC caves to massive lobbying from the cable companies, the days of unencrypted cable stations in the US will be numbered. Cable subscribers would be required to have a cable box (which will likely cost money) or CableCard-compatible box to receive even local network stations.
Boxee just recently started taking an active role in this fight. The Boxee Box has always been uniquely positioned as a legitimate cable alternative, but it wasn’t until Boxee Live TV launched last month that the company has gone against cable companies face-to-face. But if this proposal passes, it will stifle products not only from Boxee, but also products from El Gato, Silicon Dust and others — and let’s not forget about the likely millions of cable TVs currently enjoying living a box-less life.
posted 3 hours agoYep, People Research Movies On Their Phones — Especially On Apps
Adding to the stream of reports about how people do more and more on their mobile devices, mobile ad network Greystripe just released the results of a survey about the movie research process.
The network says it recruited participants through, yes, a mobile ad in its network, ultimately surveying 248 smartphone users (including iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android) and 298 iPad users in November of 2011. It found that those smartphone and iPad owners are indeed movie goers, with 39 percent of smartphone respondents and 41 percent of iPad respondents watching movies more than four times a year
posted 3 hours agoCrunchie-Winner Fotopedia Launches New App With World Bank
Just a week after winning Best Tablet Application at the Crunchies, Fotopedia is launching its latest iPad and iPhone app. The app lives up to its title Women of the World, showcasing photos of women in more than 75 countries. It was developed in partnership with the World Bank.
All of Fotopedia’s apps employ a similar design, creating a beautiful, color-rich interface for browsing high-quality photos from around the world. This isn’t the first time Fotopedia has partnered with an international organization — its first app, Heritage, was developed with UNESCO and displays photos from UNESCO World Heritage sites.
posted 3 hours agoApple Restores Qihoo 360 Mobile Apps In The App Store
On Saturday, February 4, something strange happened to Qihoo 360, a security software company. Their apps, at least the ones in the Apple App Store, were missing. After reaching out to Apple, the company learned that Apple had removed their apps based on “unusual user rating activities by unknown sources on certain Qihoo 360 applications.” There was no further explanation.
However, today Apple has reinstated Qihoo 360′s iOS apps, without asking the company to modify any of them. Seems fishy, right?
posted 4 hours agoNine Months From Launch, Chartboost’s Mobile Ad Marketplace Reaches 1 Billion Impressions
Mobile advertising took off in 2011, as tablets went mainstream and it seemed as if half of the world woke out of a daze to find they were holding some sort of Apple device. Meanwhile, advertisers and developers are increasingly relying on mobile and in-app advertising to boost revenues as consumers become more comfortable with being served ads while on the go.
The mobile app community needs to monetize via ads, which is why San Francisco-based startup, Chartboost, launched its direct-deals advertising marketplace for mobile gaming in May of last year.
posted 4 hours agoBlip COO: “We Essentially Doubled Revenue In 2011″
Blip.tv is going through some changes, with founder Mike Hudack gone and a search for a new CEO still ongoing. But the company raised a $6 million C round from its two main investors in December, and now just added to that with another $6 million credit facility from Silicon Valley Bank. There is also a new logo, and the company is now called just Blip.
So how is the indie Web video distribution service doing? “We essentially doubled revenue in 2011,” reports COO Steve Brookstein.
posted 4 hours agoSprint Sold 1.8 Million iPhones Last Quarter, 40 Percent To New Customers
Sprint Nextel this morning released its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2011 as well as the full-year results.
The company reported a net loss of $1.3 billion for the quarter, and $2.9 billion for the whole of 2011.
posted 5 hours agoSocial Marketing Platform Extole Raises $10 Million
Extole, a startup which offers a suite of social media marketing has raised $10 million in Series C round funding, led by Shasta Ventures with participation from existing investors Norwest Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, and Trident Capital. This brings the company’s total financing to $22 million.
Extole’s technology makes it easy for brands to power social referral programs, social promotions, social testimonials, and social analytics. Products such as Refer-A-FriendSocialBuilder are designed to enable brands to leverage referral marketing services and viral Facebook sweepstakes apps to increase sales and brand awareness in a measurable way, such as through likes, recommendations and more.
posted 5 hours agoposted 6 hours agoposted 6 hours agoTastemakerX, The App For Hipsters Who Totally Heard That Band First, Raises $1.8M
posted 8 hours ago- Daily iPhone App: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective scares up some fun
- Breakfast Topic: How and why did you leave your previous guild?
- Microsoft’s OneNote Mobile takes up roost in the Android Market
- Sprint announces Q4 2011 results: the iPhone brings in new customers
- Alienware X51 gaming PC: We go hands-on at the London launch event
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08 Feb ' 03:47
posted 23 mins agomHealth: Remote Patient Monitoring Is On The Rise, With Smartphones Leading The Way
Last month, we took a look at some of the ways mobile technology is transforming the health industry. While there are many factors affecting this transformation, like artificial intelligence, big data, 3-D printing, social health networks, and remote communications, to name a few (check out Josh’s post on this here), unsurprisingly, change is coming at the hands of the growing ubiquity of cell phones, smartphones, and mobile devices.
posted 28 mins agoVonage Continues To Challenge Skype With New Mobile App For iPhone, Android
Vonage has been battling Skype for many, many years, but they’re not letting up now that the latter has been acquired by Microsoft. The Internet calling company, which came dangerously close to dying a few years ago, this morning launchednew Vonage Mobile app for iPhone and Android, offering free calls and texts to anyone who also has the app installed (as predicted a few weeks ago).
This is hardly the first time Vonage has debuted apps for smartphone platforms, but this one is definitely worth checking out.
posted 46 mins agoTastemakerX, The App For Hipsters Who Totally Heard That Band First, Raises $1.2M
TastemakerX, an about-to-launch startup that will help music fans get credit for discovering the next big thing, has raised $1.2 million in Series A funding.
The company plans to launch its mobile app in early March, at South by Southwest — which seems perfect, given the event’s strong representation from both the music and tech worlds. Co-founder and CEO Marc Ruxin describes TastemakerX as “fantasy sports for music lovers,” a service where users can share their favorite music with their friends and where gaming elements encourage people to discover new musicians first.
Why Path Pissed People Off
There’s a reason why today’s news that Path was uploading its users’ entire address book to its database was stunning — all this time Path has been positioning itself as one of the good guys! … Sort of an alternative to Facebook … a kinder, gentler social network that only wanted to keep things between you and fifty of your closest friends, and then 150. And then …
It’s sort of jarring when a social network bills itself as private, and then quietly sucks up as much data as its leading — and notoriously data grabby — competitor. Still, even Facebook notifies you (via iOS notifications) that it’s grabbing your address book data.
posted yesterdayposted yesterday, begins its pitch with this simple message, “Uniiverse is not a social network.” I advised co-founders Craig Follett, Ben Raffi and Adam Meghji to put that bit in caplocks going forward.
posted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterdayposted yesterday- NeverDead DLC coming Feb. 21 with new playable character and modes
- Indie Royale Valentine’s Bundle offers a treat without the calories
- House of the Dead 3 on PSN next week, demo out now for PS Plus
- Larry Magid: Internet Reflects, Magnifies the Opportunities and Dangers of the Real World
- Robot Unicorn Attack Evolution lives in harmony on Facebook
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07 Feb ' 22:10
posted 57 mins agoWhy Launch An Airbnb For Event Spaces? Venues Just The “Tip Of The Spear” Says Eventup CEO
LA-based, Science-backed startup Eventup launched this morning, providing people who want to rent or rent out spaces for events like parties and conferences with an easy-to-use platform from which to do so.
In the same space as Venuetastic, but with a wider array of venue options that go beyond bars to offerings like homes and even a farm ranch, EventUp wants to eventually control the entire events funnel from catering to invitations. Well that’s one way to corner a market, but what if Airbnb itself encroaches on your turf?
With Funding In Tow, Uniiverse Launches A Platform For Collaborative Living
You have to love the accelerated development cycle that spins so fast in the tech industry’s echo chamber. Just as most Americans are starting to get comfortable with this whole “social revolution,” the tech industry has already exhausted every inch of “Social” (and social networking) to the degree that most are now tired of hearing about social. Case-in-point: A startup launching today, called Uniiverse, begins its pitch with this simple message, “Uniiverse is not a social network.” I advised co-CEOs Craig Follett and Ben Raffi to put that bit in caplocks going forward.
That’s part of the reason Uniiverse is resistant to being lumped in with social networks, as the Canadian startup is building an online platform that focuses on bringing value to our offline lives.
LinkedIn Picks Up Rapportive For Around $15 Million
So yes, LinkedIn has bought contact management startup Rapportive, according to multiple sources we’ve contacted, as was first reported by Liz Gannes at AllThingsD.
The startup — which aggregates and displays the social networking accounts of the people you contact though Gmail — was backed for $1 million by seed investors Charles River Ventures, Paul Buchheit, Scott Banister, Jason Calacanis, Gary Vaynerchuk, Dharmesh Shah, Shervin Pishevar, Roy Rodenstein, Kima Ventures, Zelkova Ventures, 500 Startups, Michael Zirngibl, Ashish Soni and David Cancel.
From T-Pain To $6 Million In New Funding: Viddy Attempts To Become The “Instagram Of Video”
People really like Instagram. Founder Kevin Systrom recently appeared in a Best Buy Super Bowl ad paying tribute to mobile innovators, a testament to how far its come with a team of six. (Over 15 million users-far.) While Instagram is awesome (just ask Alexia) and offers a great tool for simple, hipster-elegant photo sharing, the startup hasn’t extended its reach to include mobile video. Yet.
After watching this formula bring Instagram more than a little attention, a number of startups have entered the mobile video sharing space, all clambering to become known as the real “Instagram of video.”
posted 6 hours agoPinterest Hits 10 Million U.S. Monthly Uniques Faster Than Any Standalone Site Ever -comScore
is having its glorious hockey stick moment. TechCrunch has attained exclusive data from comScore showing Pinterest just hit 11.7 million unique monthly U.S. visitors, crossing the 10 million mark faster than any other standalone site in history.
posted 6 hours agoposted 6 hours agoposted 8 hours agoposted 8 hours agoposted 8 hours agoposted 9 hours agoYahoo Board Shakeup: Chairman And Three Others Step Down, Webb And Amoroso Step Up
posted 9 hours agoposted 9 hours agoposted 9 hours agoposted 9 hours agoposted 9 hours agoposted 10 hours agoDeviceFidelity — Received $6M in Unattributed funding from Datacard Group and Dallas Venture PartnersRapportive for $15M.DeviceFidelity — Received $6M in Unattributed funding from Datacard Group and Dallas Venture PartnersRib-X Pharmaceuticals — Received $3M in Unattributed funding from Sanofi AventisOff-Grid Solutions — Received €75k in Unattributed funding from SymbidDistil — Received $100k in Unattributed funding from CIT GAP Funds2.7.20122.7.2012 -
07 Feb ' 17:53
posted 14 mins agoSocial Candy Monetizes Cupcakes And More With Social MarketingTools
Yes, it’s another startup that wants to help businesses manage their presence on Facebook. Social Candy CEO Darin Kotalik admits that the’res no shortage of competition, but he’s hoping to differentiate his company by combining ease-of-use and breadth of features.
The company just announced that it’s expanding those features with by allowing businesses to offer coupons through their Social Candy-created Facebook pages. That’s an obvious way for Social Candy customers to drive traffic from Facebook into their stores — and to track exactly how effective those efforts are. Coupons can be set up in 15 minutes or less, and can automatically updated based on daily specials, Kotalik says.
Snapjoy’s Flickraft Promised To “Rescue” Flickr Photos — Until It Was Blocked
Photo startup Snapjoy launched a clever promotional scheme this afternoon to lure users over from Flickr. And it succeeded — perhaps too well.
The Y Combinator-backed company aims to be an online repository where users can store all their photos, while also sharing them on a limited basis. That already made Snapjoy a competitor, of sorts, to older photo sites like (Yahoo-owned) Flickr and (Google-owned) Picasa, but the startup decided to make the competition more direct with a service called Flickraft, which promised to “rescue” photos from the “sinking ship” of Flickr by creating an easy way to transfer photos from Flickr to Snapjoy.
posted 1 hour agoPinterest Hits 10 Million Monthly Uniques Faster Than Any Standalone Site Ever
It’s beautiful, it’s addictive, and now Pinterest is having its glorious hockey stick moment. TechCrunch has attained exclusive data from comScore showing Pinterest just hit 11.7 million unique monthly visitors, crossing the 10 million mark faster than any other standalone site in history.
In fact, users are spending so much time sharing their favorite images that now only Facebook and Tumblr have more social media time on site than Pinterest. Who’s propelling its rise? 18-34 year old upper income women from the American heartland. Maybe we should call it blow-dryer growth.
UpWest Labs Closes The Missing Link Between New Israeli Startups And Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley investors have been going to Israel for decades to take advantage of its pool of hardcore tech entrepreneurs. But a new generation of consumer-focused companies has been emerging in the country over the last few years — and they’re facing a few challenges. One is that the local market is relatively small, which means that it can be harder for them to design and iterate products for mainstream users in large markets elsewhere. Another is that local venture funding has been skewing towards later-stage investments. Finally given the distance, access to potential partners and Silicon Valley knowledge network can also be difficult.
posted 2 hours agoRice University And OpenStax Announce First Open-Source Textbooks
When we think about the distribution industry being disrupted, we tend to think about music and movies, whose physical media and vast shipment infrastructure have been rendered mostly obsolete over the last decade. To a lesser extent, we hear about print, and the effect of e-readers and web consumption on books and magazines. No one is making the change particularly gracefully, and the same can be said of the textbook business, which does millions of dollars of business every year selling incredibly expensive items to students — who likely consider them anachronisms.
Rice University, which has been pushing alternative distribution mechanisms for scholarly publications for years, has announced a new initiative, by which they hope to publish free, high-quality textbooks in core subjects like physics and biology via a non-profit publisher called OpenStax College. It’s the polar opposite of Apple’s iBooks textbooks, which, while they too help drag this dusty industry into the present, amount more to a new sales vector for the publishers than competition.
Booktango Automatically Publishes Your Timeless Text To Multiple Platforms
Say you, like me, wrote a book about the two Lithuanian lovers who find themselves trapped in a basement and have to solve mysteries and learn magic to escape the traps set by them by an evil wizard robot using their brawn, brains, and a little sultry lovemaking. How would you publish and sell it?
Presumably you would visit the Kindle, B&N, and Apple book stores and upload it, making it available on all of those platforms and raking in the dough. Now, however, you can just use Booktango
Dag Kittlaus, ContributorSiri Is Only The Beginning
For decades, Hollywood has been portraying machines that humans can converse with, delegate tasks to, and command. Remember the HAL 9000, KITT the car, COMPUTER from Star Trek, or even the brilliantly conceived and visualized Apple “Knowledge Navigator” from over 20 years ago? The day is dawning.
Hello Siri.
Ignite Takes $5 Million Series C To Build World Of Warcraft For Car Racing
If you want to slay orcs and elves, there’s plenty of options, but the millions of car racing gamers out there have few places to chase the checkered flag. That’s going to change because today, closed a $5 million Series C round from private investors bringing it to $17.5 million in funding. It will use the cash to speed up development of its recently launched Simraceway freemium game, as well as its skill matching technology.
Ignite plans to hook users with high-profile licensed content, accurate physics, and addictive gameplay to get users paying to race or buy cars.
Thousands Of Webcams Made Publicly Accessible By Software Bug
26 models of Trendnet webcams have been identified as vulnerable to a bug that lets anyone tap into the video stream with just an IP address. The flaw was noted a month ago and the company has been working to alert people and patch the devices. Unfortunately, the company has no way of contacting non-registered webcam owners, and so the devices may remain accessible if the users never suspect anything.
It’s a bit scary, but certainly not unprecedented. Although it’s not quite the same thing, two years ago a school was accused of spying on its students via the webcams in school-owned laptops (the district later settled). This time, it’s hackers who found their way in, and randoms on the internet who spent long hours watching the feeds.
Yahoo Board Shakeup: Chairman And Three Others Step Down, Maynard Webb And Aflred Amoroso Step Up
Yahoo has its new CEO, Scott Thompson, and founder Jerry Yang stepped down from the company and the board a few weeks ago. But all along, people have been asking when is the rest of the Yahoo board going to resign?
Well, that day is today for four more directors, including chairman Roy Bostock. He was sticking around to try to oversee the disposition of Yahoo’s Asian assets. It doesn’t look like that is going so well. Today, in his letter to shareholders, Bostock disclosed that he would not be standing for re-election to the board, and neither would 3 other directors. Meanwhile, Yahoo elected two new board members: Maynard Webb and Alfred Amoroso.
Jive Swings To A Loss, But Revenue Up 53 Percent To $22.5M In First Quarter As A Public Company
Enterprise software company Jive has just reported fourth quarter results, which represent the company’s first earnings report as a public company. Q4 total revenue came in at $22.5 million, up 53% year-over-year. The company continued to take losses in terms of profit, posting a net loss of $12.7 million for the quarter (GAAP), compared to a net loss of $6.8 million for the same period last year. Non-GAAP net loss for the fourth quarter was $9.1 million, compared to a net loss of $5.7 million for the same period last year. Analysts expected a loss of $0.39 per share and revenue of $21.01 million.
Within total revenue, product revenue was $19.2 million for the fourth quarter, an increase of 61% on a year-over-year basis. Professional Services revenue for the fourth quarter was $3.3 million, an increase of 21% on a year-over-year basis.
Recording has concluded.posted 5 hours agoposted 5 hours agoposted 7 hours agoposted 7 hours agoposted 7 hours agoposted 8 hours ago
2.8.20122.8.20122.7.20122.7.2012- Keen On… Larry Downes: Why Best Buy Is Going Out Of Business (Not So Gradually)
- Keen On… SOPA: Mob Rule or Direct Democracy? (TCTV)
- Gillmor Gang 02.04.12 (TCTV)
- Keen On… Dane Jasper: Why High Speed Broadband Is The Key To US Innovation (TCTV)
- The 16-Year-Old Startup CEO And The Hong Kong Billionaire [TCTV]
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07 Feb ' 13:24
Path Uploads Your iPhone’s Address Book To Their Servers Without A Peep
What started as a bit of aimless tinkering for developer Arun Thampi ultimately unearthed something very surprising about life-sharing service Path. As a fan of the app, Thampi took it upon himself to look at the API calls that the app made to Path’s service and found that his “entire address book (including full names, emails and phone numbers) was being sent as a plist to Path.”
Steve Gillmor, Columnistposted 15 mins agoGillmor Gang Enterprise Live 02.07.12 (TCTV)
Gillmor Gang Enterprise – Steve Gillmor, John Taschek, and Ben Kepes, Analyst for Diversity Ltd. Recording at 1pm PT.
posted 37 mins agoFacebook Reveals: Seventh Grade Boys Have Feelings, Too! (Video)
Do you remember the seventh grade? The first time your new girlfriend hated on your best friend? What about your first kiss?
I don’t remember any of that, but the memories came flying back to me after I saw this video. If I had to sum it up in one word I’d call it amazing, mostly because it combines three of my favorite things: confrontations settled over social networks, dramatic reenactments, and tweens’ tendency to talk about matters of the heart as though they understand them.
Oh, I should probably tell you what you’re about to look at. This is a dramatization of a real conversation had by seventh graders on Facebook.
Want An In-App Notification Center? There’s A SDK For That
Today, mobile promotion and discovery service AppsFire is launching a new toolkit for developers called App Booster. Meant to boost user engagement and retention, two of the toughest challenges developers face today, the App Booster SDK (software development kit) introduces a suite of tools for things like in-app notifications, user feedback, analytics and mobile app cross-promotion.
Pretty\Vacant: The New New Gadget Marketing
An interesting thing is happening in hardware marketing these days and I think Devin noticed it yesterday when he pointed out that Samsung, in their marketing of the Samsung Galaxy Note, is changing the script when it comes to gadget advertising, a tendency that is becoming more and more apparent in newer ads from many big players.
First, let’s look at the history of CE advertising. For most of the 1980s, computer marketing didn’t really exist. Take a look at this gem from a 1984 issue of Analog:
Urbanspoon: Traffic Up 80% In 2011, Mobile Growth Faster Than Web
Popular restaurant app Urbanspoon is releasing new data today related to its growth over the course of 2011. The company says its traffic is up by 80%, with mobile growth outpacing the web. The site is now seeing 28 million visits per month, with traffic now split roughly half and half between mobile and web.
On the mobile side, Urbanspoon has seen 112% year-over-year growth, while on the web side, it’s at 70% growth over last year. Overall, the company saw 255 million visits in 2011, up from 141 million in 2010.
Andrew Keen, ColumnistKeen On… Larry Downes: Why Best Buy Is Going Out Of Business (Not So Gradually)
Sometimes it’s the quiet ones who end up doing the most damage. I always thought of Larry Downes, the co-author of the mega-selling Unleashing the Killer App, as an unusually gentle and wise soul. But this was before Downes unleashed his all-too-critical powers on Best Buy, transforming himself from a cerebral author into a bomb throwing critic of America’s leading consumer electronics retailer. In Why Best Buy is Going out of Business…Gradually, a brilliant article he published at Forbes last month, Downes finally told the truth about the terrible customer service at Best Buy. And the article went viral, of course, amassing close to 3 million page views and even forcing Best Buy CEO, Brian Dunn, to issue a response
Cloudera Founder’s Big Data Management Startup WibiData Raises $5M From NEA And Eric Schmidt
Exclusive:WibiData, the big data management startup co-founded by Cloudera founder Christophe Bisciglia and Aaron Kimball, is announcing $5 million in new funding from NEA and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. Past investors in the company include Cloudera CEO Mike Olson, and SV Angel.
As we’ve written in the past, WibiData wants to help companies manage and analyze complex business data about users so you can predict how they are going to interact with the product in the future. Data such as email records, web histories and other interactions cannot be easily analyzed together, but WibiData aims to solve this problem. Specifically, the technology can be used for personalization for a number of web companies, including consumer web, e-commerce and gaming companies.
Klout Acquires Local And Mobile Neighborhood App Blockboard
Flush with new capital, Klout, the startup that measures influence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare, Google+ and other social apps, is making its first acquisition. Klout is purchasing mobile and local neighborhood app Blockboard. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Blockboard develops a neighborhood app through which neighbors can interact with one another. They can report potholes and graffiti directly to the city, alert each other about crime and vandalism through a Blockwatch, post general observations about the neighborhood, ask their neighbors questions, and post pictures of lost and found items. Basically, the app is focused on creating a community within real neighborhood.
posted 4 hours agoYippieMove Wants To Become The Twilio Of Email Migration
One of the more annoying aspects of starting a new jobs recently was switching email accounts — I tried figure out an easy way to transfer messages and contacts, but after a few minutes of fumbling around with my email client, I gave up, forwarded a few key messages, and then set to work rebuilding my contact list (mostly) from scratch.
In other words, I could really have used something like YippieMove, a product from startup WireLoad that promises to make the email migration process as easy as possible. You just enter your account details (the company supports more than 100 email providers — co-founder and CEO Viktor Petersson says it should work with pretty much any email service that uses IMAP) and YippieMove handles the rest of the process, no software installation or constant babysitting required.
posted 4 hours agoGoogle Chrome Is Now Available For Android (And It’s Fantastic)
If you have one of the few Android devices currently running Ice Cream Sandwich, then you’re going to love this post. The rest of you, including those of you on iOS, will have to gaze longingly for a while.
Because Chrome just landed on Android.
It’s faster. It syncs everything (provided you want it to). It has nifty transition effects and a more intuitive system for jumping between tabs. And it’s also loaded with potential.
Google’s Chrome browser, which has skyrocketed to popularity since its debut in 2008 and consistently gets top marks for being the fastest browser in town, has long been strangely absent from Android. To be clear, Android has always shipped with a browser of its own — and it actually shares much of the same codebase with Chrome, including the V8 JavaScript engine. But next to the real Chrome, it’s a clear wannabe. After using it for a day, I really have no intention of using the older browser again.
posted 4 hours agoWith Speeksy, Facebook Users Can Meet New People (Just Don’t Call It “Online Dating!”)
How do you meet new people in today’s digital age, without over-exposing yourself the creeps, trolls and spammers? The answer, perhaps, is build a social service on top of Facebook, leveraging your network, your friends of friends and shared interests to form connections with people you don’t know. That’s what the new startup Speeksy is doing. The service is virtualizing the experience of going out to a bar or nightclub by offering an online venue where users can interact, message each other and video chat, while bonding over their shared music playlists.
posted 4 hours agoKleiner Perkins Debuts First Engineering Fellows Class
Last year, venture firm Kleiner Perkins debuted its plans for a summer internship program to place top engineering talent from colleges at the firm’s portfolio companies. The benefit is two-fold: students get to work at the startup level, are mentored (and have the prestige of Kleiner Perkins on their resume) and startups get access to young engineering talent. Today, Kleiner is debuting the first inaugural class of the fellow program.
As Kleiner explains, the goal of the paid fellowship is to give engineering students the experience of working on tough technical problems at startups. Fellows are placed at Kleiner portfolio startups and are also invited to exclusive events at Twitter and Zynga, where they can network.
against Nest Labs and Best Buy yesterday. The suit alleges that Nest Labs is infringing on seven Honeywell patents. Honeywell is not seeking licensing fees. The consumer electronic conglomerate wants Nest Labs to cease using the technology and is actually looking to collect damages caused by the infringement. Damages? Bullshit. This is about killing the competition.
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