Issuu, the Danish startup battling the likes of Docstoc and Scribd in the professional document publication and sharing space, is today introducing a REST-based API that enables its users to automatically upload and manage publications, bookmarks, and folders under their accounts.
That means developers and designers can henceforth tap into the Issuu platform and services to equip their own applications and websites with the oft-needed functionality of offering document consultation without the need for end users to download the docs or to visit the Issuu website. Issuu already offered two APIs: one for Search (which allows developers to sift through all Issuu publications, comments, and users) and one for its Viewer product. It is now adding a third one for the ‘Upload’ feature, obviously an essential one. → Read More
As a Linux user, I’m tickled to see these new USB drives in the shape of an Emperor penguin. Not only are they super cute, they come pre-loaded with a bootable instance of Ubuntu 9.04! And if for some reason you don’t like penguins, you can get some visceral pleasure by pretending to rip off the li’l bugger’s head in order to access the USB jack inside. → Read More
KDDI R&D Laboratories, research arm of KDDI (a Japanese telcom) and Japan’s National Institute of Information & Communications Technology (NICT) yesterday announced [JP, PDF] the development of the world’s most advanced fiber optic cable. → Read More
The following message is brought to you by TechCrunch50 co-host Jason Calacanis.
In order to build excitement for the TechCrunch50 conference we’ve convinced the bean counters at TechCrunch HQ to let us give away one $2,500 ticket a day for the next 45 days. That’s more than $100,000 worth of TechCrunch50 tickets.
So, if you’re broke, laid off or too cheap to buy a ticket, all you have to do is hit your followers with the hashtag #techcrunch50 at the end of each tweet. Every Tweet you send out is another chance to win the ticket being given away that day.
Every day we will pick one of the tweets from the previous day with the #techcrunch50 hashtag at random.
Some rules: → Read More
There are 1.2 million predictions made on Twitter everyday. Those are numbers that the prediction startup Blubet pulled 2 weeks ago from the service. That’s roughly 5% to 6% of the overall tweets being sent out on any given day, according to their data. So it’s really not surprising that Blubet would want to build its business around this platform.
That wasn’t always the case. When the company started on the idea of Blubet a couple years ago, as an offshoot of the community gaming site dotblu, the idea was that it would be more of a traditional site. But then Twitter exploded in popularity, and Blubet knew that it simply couldn’t ignore the expanding social graph and platform that Twitter offers. So now Blubet is entirely built on top of Twitter. It has its own separate site, but for the site to work as it’s intended, you have to tweet out predictions you make on the site, and get others to participate.
Of course, you can also do this from Twitter, using hashtags or DMs. But the preferred method is to visit the site and fill out a prediction. From there you can assign a value to the prediction which you will win (or lose) depending on how your bet does. And you can also see friend’s predictions and give them a “yes” or “no” comment based on if you think they will come true or not. → Read More
The more we look at this thing, the more we wonder if we’ll need a special pair of pants to carry it around. Will we need LG Chocolate BL40-certified pockets? Or will we need to carry it around in some sort of sling? We still haven’t touched it, but some lucky reporter over at tech.sina got the opportunity to paw at it briefly. They didn’t say much we didn’t already know — FM transmitter, big ol’ 21:9 screen, 5-megapixel camera, etc — but they did provide a few pictures of LG’s Ol’ Sausagephone in the flesh. We’ve gotta know – if this hit the states and played friendly with US 3G, would you consider picking it up? [Via EngadgetMobile] → Read More
In what looks to be shaping up to be another healthy week for M&A activity, Sprint Nextel is putting more of its focus on the prepaid cell phone service market with a $483 million deal to buy out Virgin Mobile USA.
The acquisition, which was announced earlier this morning, calls for Sprint to pay $5.50 in stock for each Virgin Mobile share, a 31 percent premium to the MVNO’s closing share price Monday of $4.21. The deal is expected to receive approval either in the fall or in early 2010.
Sprint Nextel actually already owned 13.1 percent of Virgin Mobile, which uses the carrier’s network to offer service to some 5.2 million subscribers. The deal cancels out Virgin’s $248 million in outstanding debts and will unite Sprint’s Boost service and Virgin Mobile under the same roof. Sprint says it would keep the Virgin Mobile brand and let Virgin Mobile USA’s CEO Dan Schulman, run Sprint’s entire prepaid business if and when the deal closes late this year or early next. → Read More
In what looks to be shaping up to be another healthy week for M&A activity, Sprint Nextel is putting more of its focus on the prepaid cell phone service market with a $483 million deal to buy out Virgin Mobile USA.
The acquisition, which was announced earlier this morning, calls for Sprint to pay $5.50 in stock for each Virgin Mobile share, a 31 percent premium to the MVNO’s closing share price Monday of $4.21. The deal is expected to receive approval either in the fall or in early 2010.
Sprint Nextel actually already owned 13.1 percent of Virgin Mobile, which uses the carrier’s network to offer service to some 5.2 million subscribers. The deal cancels out Virgin’s $248 million in outstanding debts and will unite Sprint’s Boost service and Virgin Mobile under the same roof. Sprint says it would keep the Virgin Mobile brand and let Virgin Mobile USA’s CEO Dan Schulman, run Sprint’s entire prepaid business if and when the deal closes late this year or early next. → Read More
Sprint and Virgin Mobile sitting in a tree, m-e-r-g-i-n-g. Well, not merging per se. More like Sprint is acquiring Virgin Mobile. Seems as though this whole “pre-paid, no contract” thing is a hit and Sprint, looking to gain some ground in the mobile arms race, wants in on the action. → Read More
Mike Hudack, the founder of Blip.tv, just landed a major set of deals to expand the distribution of his Web video network. The biggest deal is with YouTube, which for the first time will allow Blip.tv to place its own ads in the YouTube player on behalf of the Web video creators who use Blip. Hudack is also announcing distribution deals with NBC Local Media for regular TV starting in New York City, Vimeo, and Roku set-top boxes. It is also expanding existing deals to show Blip videos on Verizon FIOS, Tivos, and Sony TVs with Ethernet jacks.
About 50,000 different shows have been uploaded to Blip, where video creators can then spread them across the Web, iTunes and set-top boxes. According to the company, Blip is doing 72 million video streams a month to a worldwide audience of 22 million people. Only 4 percent of those views are on Blip.tv itself. → Read More
IBM is buying analytics software and solutions provider SPSS in an all cash transaction at a price of $50/share – a 42 percent premium to Monday’s closing price of $35.09 on Nasdaq – resulting in a total cash consideration in the merger of approximately $1.2 billion. The acquisition is subject to SPSS shareholder approval, regulatory clearances and other closing conditions, and is expected to close later in the second half of 2009.
Big Blue said the acquisition of the publicly-held Chicago company was expected to strengthen its information-agenda initiative, which helps companies take information and turn it into a strategic asset. IBM shares fell 67 cent to $116.96 in pre-market trading, while SPSS shares jumped 41 percent to $49.59.
Update – In other news: IBM also acquired Ounce Labs, a provider of enterprise source code security testing and intends to integrate it into its Rational software business. Financial terms were not disclosed. → Read More
Ben Darnell, a key member of the Google Reader team, has left Mountain View to jump into startup life. Darnell bailed Google for FriendFeed, which was founded by ex-Googlers and notably in part by Kevin Fox, who used to work with him on the Google Reader team.
Darnell is FriendFeed’s first hire in over a year, and will get employee badge number 13. He starts today, and according to the blog post announcing the steal, he’ll be bringing his “ninja-fu data-storage and scalability skills” to the startup.
I was reading Darnell’s blog and I noticed something funny: back in May, he blogged about his experiences playing around with Google App Engine and coming up with FriendFork. The latter is a quick product mashed together to make it easier to consume, indeed, FriendFeed in Google Reader. → Read More
The Linux Foundation, the non-profit that supports the growth of the Linux kernel, is today announcing an affinity Visa Platinum credit card for people who want to contribute to advancing the OS through the organization’s initiatives. Reading the press release announcing the new credit card made me raise my eyebrows, but after giving it a bit of thought I think that this is actually not that bad an idea.
Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation in a statement says people can contribute to Linux in a variety of ways (writing code, marketing, etc.) but now have a convenient way of identifying themselves as supporters of the community “by carrying Tux in their pocket”. And then of course there’s the financial incentive. → Read More
MySpace has been taking quite a bit of heat lately for its stalling growth and waves of layoffs, but there are at least a few areas where the site has continued to do well, like MySpace Music, which still sees strong traffic. Now we’ve come across another under-recognized bright spot for MySpace: its Events platform, which has overtaken Evite, the web 1.0 startup that managed to gain a massive following despite a generally poor user experience, in terms of popularity. Evite claims to be the top event planning site on the web, reporting that it sees 25,000 invites per hour, or around 600,000 invitations sent per day. Now we’ve learned from a reliable source that MySpace is besting that by a significant margin, with around 700,000 invitations sent per day.
MySpace has been working to improve its events platform for some time, releasing a new application last March that was built by Slingshot Labs, MySpace’s secretive startup incubator. The new application’s biggest improvement was its integration of MySpace’s social graph — something that the older MySpace events application had largely failed to tap into. → Read More
While the format war is definitely settled here in the West, it appears that is not the case in China. The CBHD format is the dominant HD disc over there, and although it’s its own thing, it has more in common with HD-DVD than Blu-ray. Of course, the biggest market over there is probably still VCDs, but I think this little fact is pretty entertaining. → Read More
What we have here is the Sonos CR200 controller that was leaked a couple weeks back. By now, I’d imagine most of the CG audience is familiar with Sonos and what they’re all about, so I don’t really need to dive into that. All you really need to know about the CR200 is that it features a 3.5-inch capacitive VGA touch-screen and has a kickass keyboard. Just check out the video to see what it’s capable of. Available now for $350. → Read More
Thugs the world over are learning to outwit the Taser. As long as there’s more than one of you, you’re scot-free! The single-shot nature of the air Taser has always been frustrating to victims, too: once you zap a fool, you’re done! No “and here’s one for your old man” to be had there.
But fear not, Taser hears your cries (and the cries of those you’ve tased), for they now have created a three-shot Taser that allows for multiple attacker takedown. Or just three times the punishment for a single attacker. I see no way in which this could be a problem for anybody. → Read More
This dainty-hoofed droid has the gait of an octogenarian jogger, the face of Asimo, and the recovery ability of BigDog. Yeah, that’s not a scary combination.
Check out the video. → Read More
