Flirtomatic, the UK’s mobile and online flirting service, is launching a mobile beta in the United States following good take-up in the UK and Germany. Mark Curtis, CEO, says its because they had “consistently high usage from the US via the web” so it makes sense to launch the mobile service over there as well. Flirtomatic now has 1.3m users and is now ‘on deck’ with operators in the UK and Germany. The service enables users to to flirt online via the Web and mobile WAP site. Flirtomatic has received venture funding from Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures and Seraphim Capital. We previously reviewed Flirtomatic here. → Read More
Nokia made a name for itself with candybar style phones and the firm’s latest handsets follow that tradition. Expect two of these phones to hit carriers with low – or free – price tags while one, the 6700, will try to be sold with a price tag north of $300 → Read More
Music streaming service Spotify is getting lots of plaudits from users lately for its ease of use and vast catalogue but that’s about to change. In a blog post yesterday the startup outlined how it will be removing a number of songs from its catalogue and adding country restrictions to some tracks, which may make them unplayable for many users. The changes are being made because record labels have slapped restrictions on Spotify’s service. The issue is to do with the publishing rights associated with compilatoins. A user in one country might be able to listen to a track on one compilation in their country jurisdiction, but to share that track on a playlist with a user in another country could affect the publishing rights. It’s a bizarre situation to think of in 2009 but it means that a user could share a track with a friend in another country, but that friend wouldn’t be able to play that track. As the Sweden-based startups says: “…our hope is that one day restrictions like this will disappear for good”. Here’s the post: Some important changes to the Spotify music catalogue January 28, 2009 Next week we are going to be making some changes to our music catalogue that we feel are important to communicate clearly. Unfortunately we are going to be removing a number of songs from our catalogue and adding country restrictions to some tracks, which may make them unplayable for you. Why are we doing this? The changes are being made so that we implement all the proper restrictions that are required by our label deals. Some tracks will be restricted from play in certain countries, this means that if you share tracks with friends who are in other countries it’s possible that they won’t be able to listen to them. The reason for this is that our agreements contain strict rules as to what tracks can and can’t be played in various countries that we are now capable of implementing. These restrictions are a legacy from when most music was sold on tapes and CDs and they have continued over into streaming music, our hope is that one day restrictions like this will disappear for good. Additionally, some of the music that has been delivered to us had been delivered by mistake even though the artist did not want their music to be included in a streaming service. → Read More
Tokyo-based electronics company Lancerlink [JP] and GRANDTEC ELECTRONIC from Taiwan have jointly developed the Grand HD Cinema, a USB to HDMI converter. According to GRANDTEC, it’s the world’s first device of its kind. → Read More
Christian Susana of Germany came up with this concept of a motor home with a detachable front car for tooling around on day trips, going to restaurants, and whatnot. Susana is calling it “Colim” for Colors of Life in Motion. → Read More
While this could have been anything from Kid A, this is actually a version of “Creep” reworked by Microsoft Songsmith and the peppy beats could potentially completely cure the melancholy infused into countless proto-Goths by this moody yet charming band over the years.
The strange thing is this: SongSmith actually brings out some of the original music here but the quality here is nill. It reminds me of chiptunes. I once heard “Closing Time” done on a Gameboy’s audio processor and the song, which is a bit schmaltzy in the first place, sounded like one of the songs the Music Department would would generate for Hate Week in 1984. → Read More
Microsoft has a patent floating around for “a universal smart interface and peripheral management system for portable devices such as mobile phones.” You’d dock your phone into this thing, which would connect to a keyboard, mouse, monitor, and just about anything else that could be plugged into it – even your TV. → Read More
Social networking advertiser SocialMedia raised $6 million from IDG Ventures. Existing investor Charles River Ventures also participated. The company was shopping around for a larger investment of around $20 million with the investment bank Savian, but decided to take a smaller amount. At least, that is the story the company is going with.
The company claims that it had $16 million in revenues last year and says it was profitable for three consecutive months thanks to the launch of a new advertising product called Word of Mouth. These are opt-in display ads that asks people on social networks to answer a question or take a poll. The point of these ads are to find people who have an affinity for a brands and then rebroadcasting that affinity to their friends. → Read More
Atlas Venture has closed its eighth fund, which comes in at $283 million. The bad news is Fund VIII is smaller than Fund VII ($385 million) and comes in well below their original target of $400 million. But if there is a silver lining, it is that there are still VC houses out there raising any funds at all in this car crash of an economy. Plus the leaner, meaner fund will necessarily have to look at at early stage startups as a result.
The company is spinning the reduced fund as a positive thing, of course. “The new fund is the right size for our early-stage focus and organisational structure,” said Jean-Francois Formela, partner.
Amongst VCs themselves some will snipe about the “size” of each-other’s fund, but frankly if a startup secures backing, who cares. One of the go-to guy for tech startups in particular will therefore be the same guy as before: Fred Destin, a VC who also doesn’t mind firing off a few opinions on his blog now and again. → Read More
Sony didn’t have a great fourth quarter of 2008 to say the least. The company saw profits vanish over 2007, recording only a 10.4 billion yen verses 200.2 billion yen. The cause? You and I didn’t buy what we were suppose too. Shame on you, btw. TVs were a big factor, but maybe with the Super Bowl quickly approaching, Sony will recover some of the lost profits. Still, Sony’s seems to be heading down a dark path. → Read More
There is a slight chance that MacRumors stumbled across the first evidence of Apple’s next iPhone. It boils down to a previously unused product code – iPhone2,1 – which suddenly made an appearance in firmware 2.2.1. The current generation iPhone is notated with the product code, iPhone1,2 so they might be onto something. Plus, iPods have seen similar product code increases as new models were released. Let’s put this all together for you. Apple has a new iPhone in the works. Shocking, we know. → Read More
Following KDDI, Japan’s No.3 telecommunications company SoftBank today also presented the new cell phone line-up for this spring. The company presented a total of nine models and will start selling the first handset of the line-up (the Panasonic 930P) from tomorrow. → Read More
Google may be good at many things, but people search is not one of them. For that you’ll have to use a more specialized search engine. Spock and Wink (merged with Reunion.com) are the people-search destinations most TechCrunch readers could probably name off the top of their head. However, slowly but surely—and mostly, very quietly—a new player has been making serious headway in this search vertical, and it’s name is Pipl.com.
Going by ComScore’s December numbers, Pipl is leading in the US with 557K unique users to Spock’s 260K, but is trailing internationally with 1.35M uniques to Spock’s 2.38M. How has Pipl pulled this off? Matthew Hertz, the company CEO, tells me it’s mostly word-of-mouth. It’s a simple answer but it rings true. Just take it out for a spin and you’ll see why—it’s just good. In fact it’s so good it’ll probably scare some people’s pants off when they see what information it is able to—legally—drudge up. → Read More
Well, to be fair, pretty much everybody loves “Lost”. I for one am happy that there’s some decent sci-fi on television that won’t be violated and then canceled because of a talking car. Popular Mechanics is expressing their love in their own particular way though. → Read More
Japan’s second biggest mobile phone carrier KDDI au today presented their new cell phones [JP] for this spring. The first handsets will be available in Nippon on Saturday.
And they have a few spectacular models to offer – if only the Japanese carriers did what they promised a few months back (large-scale internationalization due to a shrinking home market), everyone could get their hands on these things. → Read More
There is a slight chance that MacRumors stumbled across the first evidence of Apple’s next iPhone. It boils down to a previously unused product code – iPhone2,1 – which suddenly made an appearance in firmware 2.1.1. The current generation iPhone is notated with the product code, iPhone1,2 so they might be onto something. Plus, iPods have seen similar product code increases as new models were released. Let’s put this all together for you. Apple has a new iPhone in the works. Shocking, we know. → Read More
When twitter recently added a “Suggested Friends” feature, I was more than a little disappointed. Unlike Facebook’s “People You May Know” feature, no explanation is provided for why these people were suggested. CrunchBase Information IBM Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
