Startup oDesk received rave reviews at this years TechCrunch50 conference thanks to its innovative workplace platform. The startup was voted as demopit winner with the launch of a new iPhone application that allows project administrators to monitor the work stream of their team members while they’re on the go.
Today, oDesk’s “oConomy” meter, which is the amount of money that is earned from workers on oDesk, hit $100 million. The oConomy showcases data from the work activity of 350,000+ oDesk users in over 150 countries. → Read More
Startup oDesk received rave reviews at this years TechCrunch50 conference thanks to its innovative workplace platform. The startup was voted as demopit winner with the launch of a new iPhone application that allows project administrators to monitor the work stream of their team members while they’re on the go.
Today, oDesk’s “oConomy” meter, which is the amount of money that is earned from workers on oDesk, hit $100 million. The oConomy showcases data from the work activity of 350,000+ oDesk users in over 150 countries. → Read More
Skip to 1:00 mark and prepare to be amazed at the multiplayer Excitebike Wii port. Seriously, there are people out there that will buy a Wii just for this WiiWare game and the side-scrolling retro action. I might. Click through for the awesome trailer. → Read More
In September, defense contractor Raytheon announced an agreement to purchase R&D innovator BBN Technologies, but didn’t say for how much. Today, the deal closed and the price came out. It is $350 million.
Investors Accel Partners and General Catalyst Partners, who co-led a management buyout in 2004, made out very nicely. Accel says that its cut was more than $100 million, which suggests it owned about a third of the company. (BBN was one of Accel partner Jim Breyer’s investments). Presumably, General Catalyst owned another third. The deal turned out to be more than a ten-bagger. → Read More
Google has just announced the release of a handful of major new features for its Google Custom Search products, including a new set of themes, improved use of rich snippets in custom search, and a new Wikipedia search. The announcements aren’t especially related, but they’ll be welcome news to the millions of sites that have deployed Custom Search.
For those that don’t know it, Wikipedia’s search is powered by Google Custom Search behind the scenes. Update: Google says that Custom search is actually only used if you install the Google Custom search skin. The new Wikipedia skin that they’re launching today is quite slick — it’s inline so you won’t have to leave the page, and it allows you to restrict your search to pages that are linked to from whatever Wikipedia entry you’re reading. → Read More
To paraphrase the great Joe Rogan, from last Saturday’s UFC 104, I don’t watch much TV, maybe the Discovery Channel here and there to see a documentary or two. I bring this up because I’ve been told to write about some TV show called “V,” and the beauty is that I have no idea what it’s about! My first thought was, “V For Vendetta? Oh, no? Oh, well, then yeah, not a clue.” Apparently it’s a re-make of an old sci-fi show. Thankfully, though, ABC, the network where this show will air here in the U.S., has just posted the first seven minutes online. Let’s watch it, together! → Read More
Today marks the death of an internet giant. One of the first, one of the best. Oh GeoCities. What would we have done without you? Where would we have put our brightly colored, constantly flashing backgrounds? Who else had rotating .gifs for links and neon green page hit counters? There is no substitute for your plethora of font colors and sizes, for your broken HTML codes and page badges, for your MIDI synth-horns. We will sorely miss your animated “Under Construction” signs we came to know and love. → Read More
While scores of parents the world over may worry endlessly about the distinct possibility of their children growing up nerdly, I say get ‘em started early with stuff like these Star Trek onesies. → Read More
This past weekend, Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone spoke at Startup School. Before they took the stage, they met up with Y Combinator’s Paul Graham and came up with a great idea: A deal to ensure that Y Combinator startups working on Twitter-related projects have priority access to the tweet stream, as well as access to Twitter’s team.
The idea led Graham to delay the application deadline for YC Winter 2010 startups for two days, so they could release two new Requests For Startups (RFS), YC’s recently announced program that gives applicants basic big picture ideas from which to form startups around. One of these new RFSes is obviously to build something on top of Twitter. Here’s the description: → Read More
Streaming music startup Spotify usually makes a big deal out of the fact that its service is so awesome and delightful (hey, it is pretty good) that it’s never needed to do any advertising or marketing. Well that changes today because its first ever commercial television advert premieres today on TV Network Kanal 5 in Sweden. And here it is: → Read More
The Tokyo Polytechnic University has showcased c-loc at this year’s Digital Contents Expo, a spectacular mapping software for “time and space” that runs on a touch screen. The technology looks super-futuristic, and it not only works but is actually useful, too. → Read More
[UK]There we go again.
The Telegraph has published an article about some survey which claims social networks such as Twitter are costing British businesses at the very least £1.38 billion (approx. $2.25 billion) a year.
Shocking findings, I daresay!
Morse, the IT services and technology company who commissioned the survey, said the true cost to the economy could actually be substantially higher than the £1.38bn estimate.
How about we settle for a gazillion? → Read More
Nothing says “please rob me blind” like riding a foot-powered scooter and housing your iPhone in a dedicated quiver-like sash that exposes the top-most part of the device, logo and all. → Read More
Rumors are abound that Nokia may be looking to release a new version of its Booklet 3G netbook sometime next year. → Read More
Last week at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Google’s Marissa Mayer took the stage for two reasons. The first was to formally announce the Google/Twitter search deal, but the second was the show off a new product: Google Social Search. The on-stage demonstration was interesting, but left a lot of questions unanswered. Today, the Google Labs experiment goes live, and we’ll get those answers.
Social Search essentially pulls in information from social networks to augment Google search results. But a major question is: What social networks get pulled it? While the experiment isn’t quite live yet, it would seem that from the video below made by Google’s Matt Cutts, Social Search, at least at first, will be able to include results from Twitter, FriendFeed, Picasa, Blogger, and Google Reader. → Read More
[Italy] Facebook has opened a commercial office in Italy to capitalise on the social network’s growth there. The news was picked up by major italian publications, and it may have a significant impact on the ecosystem here in Milan, even if it’s only a sales and business development office. Of course Milan, as a the commercial centre for Italy, is a no-brainer to start an ad-sales office. However, it does mean it won’t be plugging in much to the startup scene which is largely centred around Rome, where it’s cheaper to operate from. → Read More
AOL is losing another longtime executive, David Liu. He is the senior vice president in charge of Global Messaging, which includes AIM, ICQ, and AOL’s more recent Lifestreaming products. Liu spearheaded the transformation of AIM into a lifestreaming client that mixes private and public messages from Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere.
When CEO Tim Armstrong was looking for someone to head up AOL’s overall Internet and mobile communications, which also includes email, Liu was the strongest internal candidate. But Armstrong decided to go outside the company and hired Brad Garlinghouse, who used to be in charge of all of Yahoo’s communications products. → Read More
Late last night, I spent 1,500 words explaining why Verizon’s Droid, like the dozens of competitors before it, is not the ever-sought-after “iPhone killer.” I really should have just waited until this morning and listened to Verizon’s earnings call. After all, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg more or less said it himself.
When asked about a possible partnership with Apple in the future with the iPhone, Seidenberg had this to say, “We obviously would be interested at any point in the future that they would be interested in having us as a partner. … This is a decision that is exclusively in Apple’s court.” → Read More
Over the weekend we wrote about Bump Technologies’ recent funding round led by Sequoia Capital, which was revealed (perhaps accidentally) during Sequoia Partner Greg McAdoo’s presentation at Y Combinator‘s Startup School. Bump declined to comment on the round on Saturday, but they’ve now confirmed that the round has just closed. They still wouldn’t confirm the exact amount of the round, but we’ve heard it’s over $3 million.
Bump did disclose the angel investors joining the round, and they’ve got some impressive names on board:
Ram Shriram (Sherpalo Ventures; founding board member at Google)
Ron Conway (SV Angel LLC)
Joshua Schachter (founder, Delicious)
Aydin Senkut (Felicis Ventures) → Read More
[UK] 4iP, quasi venture investment fund from TV broadcaster Channel 4, is putting even further, undisclosed, investment into Audioboo, the ‘Twitter for audio’ startup. As part of the deal, UBC Media, the content and software supplier to the radio industry, is also effectively injecting cash into the forthcoming Audioboo Pro version of the startup’s iPhone app by buying 8 licences, though how much those cost hasn’t been released. Audioboo has already sold a Pro version to The Royal Opera House, although that one sale won’t get it very far. However, they say media brands like the The Guardian, Channel 4 News, the BBC, TechCrunch Europe (well, me now and a again), The Telegraph and PaidContent have all used “Audioboos” style interviews as part of their content. I can confidently say that Audioboo is a great reporting platform because you literally just record the audio and upload from inside the app. The professional version allows one to queue uploads as well. However, I have had equal success with the iPadio app which, like Audioboo, also tweets out a link to the audio. The difference between the two is that iPadio is really going after the internal corporate communications market, while at the same time giving away the app to create adoption. Audioboo is going after consumers and media brands. Daniel Heaf, Investor for 4iP, said: “Our first round of funding helped Audioboo to market to prove both a user and market need. Now is the time to help Mark and his team fully realise that opportunity.” No doubt Audioboo will use this PR opportunity to boost it’s attempt to fund-raise in the US, which I gather it’s off to do shortly. CrunchBase Information AudioBoo Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
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