Venture capitalist Josh Kopelman has stated that he likes startups that shrink markets – “We love investing in technologies and business models that are able to shrink existing markets. If your company can take $5 of revenue from a competitor for every $1 you earn – let’s talk!” And while he isn’t an investor in Seattle-based real estate startup Redfin, I’m pretty sure he likes their business model. The company is doing its best to completely remove real estate agents and brokers (and their absurd fees) from at least half of a home sale. If you use them when you buy a home, they reimburse 2/3 of the broker fee to you, keeping 1/3 for themselves. 60 Minutes covered the company last May, which led to a surge in business. CEO Glenn Kelman told me today that, since launching in February 2006, they’ve been involved in 1,500 transactions and have reimbursed $12 million to customers. The average refund is $10,000. The company had 2007 revenues of $5 million, he says. They’ve just launched a new version of the website that includes more frequent MLS updates and the ability to group home sales by neighborhood and download the data. They are also providing deeper data on homes currently on the market as well as historical sales (they compete with a number of other startups in search, including Zillow, Trulia and Roost). If you want to use Redfin, check first to make sure they cover your geographic area, which include the San Francisco/Bay Area, San Diego, Orange County, LA, Seattle, Washington DC/Baltimore, and Boston. Chicago is coming soon. CrunchBase Information Redfin Zillow Trulia Roost Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Seattle-based GlobalScholar is announcing today a $27 million B Round from existing investors Ignition Partners and Knowledge Universe Education. This is on top of a previously undisclosed $15.5 million A Round the company raised early last year. Board members include Ignition’s Brad Silverberg and former Drugstore.com CEO Peter Neupert. In conjunction with the investment round, GlobalScholar is also announcing that it has acquired Excelsior Software for an undisclosed amount (although it was less than half the total raised). Excelsior makes student assessment software used by teachers in 1,000 school districts nationwide. GlobalScholar will be adding the Excelsior’s business to its existing Web-based tutoring platform, which it launched quietly last fall. GlobalScholar is a WebEx for tutors. Parents and students can find pre-screened tutors on GlobalScholar for a variety of subjects and pay for one-time homework help or engage in ongoing tutoring sessions. The sessions occur on GlobalScholar’s Website, which provides an online whiteboard, audio chat, archiving, and billing. (Here is a screencast explaining how it works). Tutors can charge their own rates—which can range from $5 to $95 an hour—and GlobalScholar takes a 20 percent cut. The first hour is only $1 to encourage people to try out the service, and GlobalScholar is offering $5,000 to the student with the highest SAT score that takes an SAT prep class online. Competitors include SmartThinking, Tutor.com, and TutorVista—the NYT reviews Tutor.com today. Watch out, Kaplan. In addition to GlobalScholar, the company also launched two other Websites in the past few weeks. SchoolFinder pulls together basic information for elementary and high schools and lets parents compare one school against another. And CollegeFinder does the same for colleges, pulling in rankings from U.S. News & World Report and the Princeton Review. It also lists celebrity alums for each college. (Did you know that Sigourney Weaver and Ted Koppel both went to Stanford?). Parent and student reviews are coming soon. Here are some screen shots: → Read More
http://llnw.jibjab.com/content/player.swf JibJab has obviously figured out that pasting our pictures onto a video is a sure fire way to get a link from us. Here’s the latest, although I still like Gizmoz’s effort a lot more. Nice to see Om Malik doing the moves so soon after his hospital visit. CrunchBase Information JibJab Gizmoz Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
[photopress:Garmin_Nuvi_phone.jpg,full,center] Our NYC writers are at a mystery event sponsored by Garmin, and they’ve sent me something hot. Garmin’s getting into the mobile phone business, and they’re getting in hard. What you see above is the first image of the new Garmin Nuviphone, a touchscreen, 3.5G, GSM phone that’s packed — packed — with features, much of it from Google, like local search, traffic, gMail, gChat, weather, and even Google Panorama. And it’s an MP3 player, and shoots video and stills with automatic geotagging, and it has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. MMS, SMS, and other instant messaging protocols are supported. Fuel prices, stocks, you name it, it’s in here. Oh, and GPS. It’s almost exactly the size of an iPhone. No word on pricing or who the carrier might be, but it’ll be available in Q3 of 2008. More pics and details to follow soon. [UPDATE]: Couple more pics after the jump. Gallery [photopress:scaled.IMG_0739.JPG,thumb,pp_image][photopress:scaled.IMG_0740.JPG,thumb,pp_image][photopress:scaled.IMG_0731.JPG,thumb,pp_image][photopress:scaled.IMG_0733.JPG,thumb,pp_image][photopress:scaled.IMG_0732.JPG,thumb,pp_image][photopress:scaled.IMG_0742.JPG,thumb,pp_image][photopress:scaled.IMG_0743.JPG,thumb,pp_image] → Read More
Dopplr, lets you share your future trips with your social network, has been been working on a new feature that lets you import trips from calendaring applications like Google Calendar and Apple iCal. They are still finalising the design and layout, but alerting early testers on the site. The startup won early stage funding in December from a gaggle Web names including Martin Varsavsky, Joichi Ito, Reid Hoffman and The Accelerator Group led by Saul Klein. → Read More
Lovers of Slacker Radio, prepare to shower me with petals of rare flowers, delicious food, and promises of sexual favors, for I bring news that the Slacker Portable, which has been delayed more times than Winehouse’s rehab visits, is finally set to ship tomorrow. For those not in the know, the Slacker Portable is a device not unlike an iPod or Zune, but it uses local Wi-Fi to load songs into the device which are played for your, and you rate them, as you do on the Slacker website. For those who like social networking mixed in with their music, this is the player for you, and you can thank me for the news later. Slacker Portable Ships Tomorrow. What’s Next? [Laptop, whom we bested in Beer Pong at CES, just so's ya know] → Read More
I’ve never really wanted a digital photo frame, but their feature sets are starting to get to the point where I can understand that someone sane might want one. These Sony ones are certainly of a high quality, at 7″ or 9″ and 800×480 resolution with 512MB of storage in the big one and 256MB in the small one. They both also sport Bluetooth connectivity so you can shoot your photos right over from your mobile or Bluetooth-able camera. And the thing that might actually make them worthwhile is the HDMI-out through which you can view your photos on your HDTV. Now you can bore your friends and family in vibrant, razor-sharp 1080p! Sony Announces Bluetooth Digital Photo Frames with HDMI Ports [Gearlog] → Read More
Mobile internet start-up Rummble, a location-based content discovery startup still in closed beta, has launched an application for Bebo users. Beboers will get an application which shows a map on their profile and shows their friends which countries they have visited and what places they recommend in those countries. Rummble has a Facebook application already. Rummble’s mobile “pitch” is based around learning users preferences and who is trusted in your friends network. Rummble has a team of five based in Cambridge, UK, headed by Andrew J Scott and, though privately backed, is looking for venture capital funding as well as media partners. They are certainly playing their cards close to their chest because, pushing what seems like a year, this is one of the longest closed betas I can remember. Or is that unkind? Here’s more on Rummble. → Read More
http://gamevideos.com//swf/gamevideos11.swf?embedded=1&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&src=http://gamevideos.com/video/videoListXML%3Fid%3D17300%26ordinal%3D%26adPlay%3Dfalse I’m really the wrong guy to be posting this, but if you can figure out what the heck is going on here, please comment below. I mean why would Diddy Kong be fighting a lizard thing? → Read More
Startup MVNO Blyk – which supports its free mobile network for 16 to 24 year olds by sending them targeted adverts – has secured undisclosed investment from Goldman Sachs and the Industrial and Financial Investments Company (IFIC), and plans a launch in the Netherlands. It launched first late last year in the UK. Also in the round were Sofinnova Partners and some private investors. Founded by ex-Nokia president Pekka Ala-Pietilä and Antti Ohrling, Blyk will piggyback on Vodafone’s network, and plans other Euorpean launches. Last week they denied slow subscriber rates after a disgruntled Blyk user said they and their friends had turned off the Blyk handset’s messaging capabilities in order to avoid receiving the adverts. Kids huh? → Read More
[photopress:bill_gates_xbox_360_221105.jpg,full,center] I’m all about “Takin’ it to the top” to get your stuff fixed. If I have a problem with customer service, I have no compunction against asking for a supervisor. Jon, writing to Consumerist, had no scruples about this either. When his Xbox 360 started acting up, he wrote to Kathleen Hogan, VP of Customer Service, as well as the big man Gates himself. The results? A new Xbox 360, that worked. We can’t say this will happen for everyone, but it’s good to know Mr. Gates checks his email once in awhile, yes? Emailing Bill Gates Results In New XBOX [Consumerist] → Read More
Bazaarvoice, a US-based online ratings and reviews provider, has secured funding (amount undisclosed) from venture capital firm European Founders to expand in the UK and Europe in 2008. The 160-strong client base includes Dell, figleaves.com, Early Learning Centre, Timberland and Goldsmiths. The European Founders Fund is run by the three Samwer brothers who also invested in LinkedIn, currency trading and conversion site Oanda.com and ReachLocal. In September last year the firm closed $8.8 million in Series B funding in a round led by Battery Ventures with Austin Ventures and First Round Capital also participating. Texas-based Bazaarvoice provides white label Amazon-like editorial recommendations for products to other companies. The pitch is that it is cheaper for companies to use Bazaarvoice’s setup than build their own client in-house. → Read More
Apologies to the Register for stealing their Yahoo! headline schtick. 2008 will be the year mobile porn gets a foothold on the market, say a number of sources in the industry. Europe, always ahead in the porn game, spent almost $800 million last year on mobile phones — a number I would question if not for the iPhone’s extremely pornable form factor. And the US only spent $24 million — for shame! The bandwidth most of us get on our non-3G phones isn’t enough for anything more than e-mail and crippled mobile web, so if the industry wants its consumers to shell out for a mobile peep show, they’ll need to up the transfer speeds. Here’s hoping. Porn to spice up cell phones [Yahoo!] → Read More
Instapaper is a cool new service taking bookmarks back to basics. If you come across some websites that you want to read but are too busy to do so, you can click on an Instapaper browser bookmarklet and then return to the Instapaper website later to read them. Think of it as Del.icio.us stripped of any tagging or social features. Instapaper is a side project of Marco Arment, lead developer at Davidville, which produces the very popular micro-blogging service Tumblr. Here is Marco’s premise for the site: You come across substantial news or blog articles that you want to read, but don’t have time at the moment. You need something to read while sitting on a bus, waiting in a line, or bored in front of a computer. Instapaper has a very simple design; you don’t even need a password or email address to use it. When logged into Instapaper, your links are sorted into three groups: Unread, Recently Read, and Recently Skipped. Buttons on the side help you sort links between the groups. Clicking one of the ‘Unread’ links automatically pushes a site down into the ‘Recently Read’ feature. Instapaper also plays nice with the iPhone, featuring an optimized interface and the now-obligatory customized web clip. We’ve covered two other similar bookmarking services recently: WebMynd and ControlC. [ via John Gruber ] → Read More
[photopress:mattyroxxx.jpg,full,right]Artists whose songs are used in Guitar Hero and Rock Band get royalties from the sales of the games, and the games have sold like insane nutty crazy. In fact, revenue from both games in 2007 surpassed that of actual musical digital download revenues, which was the largest growing sector of sales for the music industry. In other words, more money was generated by having a hit on a video game than on iTunes. This could be the first signs of a new economic model for bands: release your music for free, and make money on the inclusion rights. In fact, I’ll be that within a year I’ll be writing to you about a band that’s using just such a strategy, if they’re not already out there. Rock Band, Guitar Hero Sales Outperform Digital Music Sales in 2007 [Primotech[ → Read More
I know you’ve all been poring over FCC documents in your mad pursuit of Nokia news, but you might have missed this one. The new and improved N95 has been approved by the FCC, so now you can enjoy your High Speed Data Packet Access with their blessing. Apparently it looks just like the old one, which is just fine, though I would have preferred some big fins on it so you know it’s fast. Nokia N95 8GB NAM passes FCC approval [The Nokia Blog] → Read More
[photopress:japanesecat3603.jpg,full,center] This cute photo is to counteract the horror of the story below. You’re playing your Xbox 360, you’re really into your game, and your 17-month old daughter accidentally knocks the console over. Do you: a) Chuckle to yourself about having a clumsy kid? b) Explain to her that she has to be more careful and give her a “time out” in her room? c) Punch her in the face until she’s dead? I think you know where I’m going here. Tyrone Spellman punched his daughter when she did just that, and now she is dead. He faces murder charges. Do not be like Tyrone, your Xbox isn’t worth it. Child punched to death for interrupting game [Tech.co.uk] → Read More
At MacWorld, I got a little hands-on time with Casio’s interesting new hybrid camera, the EX-F1. It’s not a DSLR, nor is it a point-n-shoot, but it has many features of both. It’s also a great high-speed picture taker, with speeds of up to 600 frames per second. I was impressed by it, despite its high price. Tech-On has a great interview with Jin Nakayama, one of the product managers of the camera, and he’s made an interesting claim: the day of the shutter on camera is done. And it makes sense: CCDs don’t really need one, they’re a hold-over from an analog age. It’s an interesting interview, and you’ll learn more about this amazing camera, as well as see some new videos of it in action. [Interview] Casio: There Is No Need for Camera Shutter [Tech-On!] → Read More
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