Is an iPhone price war about to break out in the UK? After Vodafone and Orange bagged the iPhone – when O2′s two year monopoly expired in September – we learn today that Tesco, the UK supermarket leviathan, is to sell the iPhone on Tesco Mobile, its MVNO joint venture partnership with O2.
This news just sent the iPhone directly into the mainstream. UK iPhone app developers are looking at an even bigger gold rush than before.
Both iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS handsets will be sold in Tesco Phone Shops and online through Tesco Direct in the UK, possibly before the Christmas holidays.
Tesco Mobile normally focuses on the low end of the market with voice and text, and we’re told the prices will be “competitive”. As an MVNO, Tesco has a fairly free hand regarding the the markets it goes after. O2 says it has sold over one million iPhones since September 2007, clearly to early adopters. → Read More
KIDO’Z, the Israeli company behind the eponymous media browser for kids, has released a new version of its program and insists that we now refer to it as a Web OS for kids instead.
It’s certainly not an invalid point, since the new KIDO’Z incorporates communication features besides content consumption elements only, and the company is making strides in signing up computer manufacturers to have the platform pre-installed on machines. → Read More
You would think that, almost exactly 4 years after opening up to the public, WordPress.com would have a way for people to subscribe to blogs by e-mail, right? You’d be wrong, at least until today.
While there has always been the possibility to subscribe to blogs by e-mail using FeedBurner or other RSS facilitators, WordPress.com’s parent company Automattic has now added an email subscription feature to the popular free blogging service. → Read More
I’m not sure any lasting change will come from our series of Scamville posts. For now the most egregious of the social gaming offers are gone, which is a good thing. But none of the big players seem to have felt much pain. And, importantly, Facebook’s rules still allow most of the really bad stuff (as long as users are being told in the fine print exactly how they’re being screwed). It’s only a matter of time before business as usual kicks in.
Four companies have felt the wrath of Facebook in the wake of Scamville: Tattoo, Gambit, Social Hour and Social Reach. Facebook doesn’t openly talk about the fact that these companies have been “banned,” but they’ve let the app developers know – work with these guys and there will be trouble.
Zynga also got a slap on the wrist with the suspension of Fishville for a few days, but their cash cows, like Farmville, were never touched. And that’s despite the fact that we showed clear violations of Facebook’s rules on Zynga games via DoubleDing, an offer provider that Zynga has some control over.
Ultimately only those four companies took a permanent hit. And we’re still scratching our heads over Gambit. → Read More
We all know the Mobile web is exploding in popularity. Opera Mini, Opera’s mobile browser, grew its monthly users by 11 percent to nearly 40 million users in October from 32 million users in August. In terms of page views, Opera Mini delivered 17.2 billion last month, a 238 percent annual increase, indicating that mobile web usage is growing fast. Since September’s report, page-views have gone up by nearly 15 percent. → Read More
Only a year ago, the conventional wisdom was that blogs were dead and microblogging would soon replace them. Twitter was supposed to kill blogs because it’s so much simpler to publish one sentence fragment at a time rather than whole thoughts bunched together into what is known in the trade as “paragraphs.”
Today, blogs are doing fine, while Twitter is struggling with flattening growth, at least to its Website Twitter.com (clients like Seesmic and TweetDeck have seen no slowdown). The weakness Twitter has been experiencing in the U.S. → Read More
These cute little robot figures are strictly for decoration, but they hearken back to a day when decorative figures were our toys. Do none of you remember the fun we had with immobile, poorly-molded Star Wars figurines and the original tin robots these ones emulate? Toys are a bit more complicated these days — not that I don’t enjoy them too. → Read More
Earlier today GigaOm reported that Dropbox raised a new $7.25 million funding round over the summer (a number they derived from a SEC filing but that CEO Drew Houston wouldn’t confirm). We just spoke to Houston, who says that figure is wrong, and it’s off by nearly a year: Dropbox did close a Series A funding round, but it was for $6 million, and it was back in October 2008. And it was led by Sequoia, not Accel (though Accel did participate in the round).
Previously, Dropbox raised a seed round led by Sequoia that was $1.2 million in convertible debt, with Amidzad Partners also participating. They also raised money through the Y Combinator program. → Read More
Here’s the thing. I appreciate innovation. This rechargable portable refrigerator looks handy. Handy if you live in a world without ice. I mean really now: there is more water than anything else in the world, and you possess the means to freeze it in your very own home.
Once you decide that you’d rather use up about a gazillawatt of energy to keep a couple drinks cold rather than reach into get your hand cold for one second, then you’ve gone too far.
It’s like buying a rechargeable shirt that pushes your chest in and out. Why not just breathe? → Read More
There’s no real cause for alarm here, but it might be a good talking point (or at least something to be aware of) that Windows 7 is nose and nose with OS X for install numbers, according to stats published by Net Applications. This isn’t really significant in and of itself, as it was sure to happen at some point or another.
The fun part is that both sides can use it as ammunition: “We sold more copies in a month than you’ve sold in ten years!” or “A month later and only 5% have upgraded? Either Windows 7 sucks or you’re all stupid, or both.” Good points all around, guys. → Read More
I think we can all agree that these require a collective “aw.” Then again, I’m guessing the sound is somewhat… anemic. → Read More
If you got excited reading about the Pet Acoustics app for pets, but were dismayed by the whopping $2 price tag, here’s some holiday cheer that might help your heart grow three sizes larger: we have ten codes for the Pet Jingles holiday app from Pet Acoustics! And just like Santa, we’re going to make a list, and check it twice. How do you get on that list? Click on through to find out. → Read More
There’s a ton of buzz around location right now. Our discussion on it at the RealTime CrunchUp this past Friday easily could have gone on twice as long as it did. There are just so many interesting facets: Business models, privacy, real-life social implications, and so on. Not surprisingly, we’re seeing an explosion of services that are built around it. One such service was a TechCrunch50 demo pit company this year, OnTheRoad.
Started in 2004 in the Czech Republic to connect travelers, newer devices like smartphones with GPS are poised to take the service to the next level. While a lot of location services such Foursquare, Gowalla, and now Loopt are built around the idea of “checking-in” to venues, OnTheRoad takes a different approach. It’s more about creating a geotagged travel diary when you specifically go on a trip somewhere. → Read More
Would you make a monitor that had a fake arm sticking out of it, brandishing a knife at the viewer? I would, too, but we would never sell any because people find that sort of thing scary. I don’t know why. But whatever the reason, it’s the same as why they’d be afraid of this Apuri USB hub from Roccat. It looks like a tripodal scorpion ready to thrust its barb into your hand should you attempt to unplug that thumbdrive. → Read More
This kit uses a CD-ROM drive and an Arduino board to build a clever robotic lock. This dude used a bolt to create the project and it’s voice activated. → Read More
This week’s TechCrunch Europe Job of the Week is for a Lead Architect with ChannelFlip Media.
Remember, it costs only £20 to post *any* kind of advert on the CrunchBoard related to your startup/business, whether it be jobs, searches for office space or requests for new projects.
Every week we publish the Job of the Week here (14,000+ on RSS) and Twitter it to about 16,000+ more people. To apply to have Job of the Week featured, put up a job on the CrunchBoard and contact editorial.
Help European startups by carrying our CrunchBoard widget on your site. → Read More
Google’s acquisition of display advertising startup Teracent yesterday had significant meaning for rival Tumri; the San Mateo-based advertising platform now counts tech giant Google as a competitor. Tumri, which launched in 2004, provides a similar advertising technology to Teracent. The startup’s product, the AdPod, creates display ads that are customized in realtime to the specific consumer and site.
Tumri’s dynamic ad platform is optimized at the creative level to enable advertisers to change the animation, background template, featured product, headline, image, and more dynamically based on who is viewing the ad and where the individual is viewing the ad from geographically. → Read More
Short Version: T-Mobile’s 4th Android device has a lot going for it. 5.0 megapixel camera, all the smartphone basics, WiFi, 3G, GPS, and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. But it feels kinda cheap, runs Android 1.5, and for $229.99? No thank you. → Read More
This morning we broke the news that Canopy Financial, no. 12 on this year’s Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies, is a complete sham.
And it’s no surprise that today, everyone is trying to point the finger at everyone else.
The company’s investment bank, Financial Technology Partners, which has represented Canopy Financial through at least two separate rounds of fraudulent fundraising, emailed to say: → Read More
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