Personal genomics startup 23andMe has recently raised another $14.2 million to close out its $27.8 million Series B round, according to regulatory filings with the SEC. The filing indicates that the new funding is an amendment to the company’s previously reported raise of $11 million in May, which was followed by an additional $2.6 million in June. We’ve reached out to 23andMe to confirm the funding amount, and to also determine if there are any new investors.
The last few months have been rocky for the company. In September, co-founder Linda Avey left 23andMe to start a foundation dedicated to studying Alzheimer’s disease. In late October, the company laid off a substantial chunk of its workforce, but declined to comment on how many people were affected. → Read More
It’s been a running theme for the past few years, and as more and more people get faster Internet connections, and as video compression technology continues to improve, we’re going to be hearing a lot more about it. I refer, of course (of course!), to illegal streams of live sporting events. Whether you’re firing up TVAnts on Sunday to watch Arsenal take on Aston Villa, or trolling USTREAM for a live feed of WWE’s Royal Rumble, or looking for MMA-TV to watch this month’s UFC pay-per-view, you are, in fact, breaking the law. Not only are you breaking the law, but you may even be taking money away from the companies/teams/sports you purport to support. But is that all there is to it? → Read More
You like bacon? Who doesn’t?! Howsabout popcorn? Yes? If you find yourself short on time every day, perhaps you could combine bacon and popcorn by using BaconPop. Each bag is filled “with delicious, buttery, bacontastic popcorn,” according to ThinkGeek. → Read More
[UK] A new social network that connects people with real-world places and enables them to have discussions around those places is set to launch in just over a week.
Currently in a closed alpha, UK-based Zubworld mixes elements of Facebook and Twitter (and just about every other social network) but with a central and potentially distinctive theme. Members of Zubworld can purchase their favourite ‘real world’ places – 3.2 million of them – and become a virtual property tycoon. In that sense, it’s a bit like Monopoly, except you play with real money.
Locations typically cost $5 via PayPal, although the more prestigious New York is priced at $50. The more places you buy, and the more followers you amass for each place you own – users follow places not people in Zubworld, although they can still friend each other – the higher your rank. So it has the gaming element of location-based social networks like Foursquare too. Zubworld doesn’t currently offer a mobile version, however, although an iPhone app is planned. → Read More
http://www.giantbomb.com/video/video.swf Play Borderlands. You’ll love it and the fact that Gearbox Software keeps releasing modest-sized expansions rocks. The last one, Dr. Ned’s Zombie Island, provided me with a weekend of fun and the next one previewed above, looks just as great. So sit back and watch the teaser trailer for Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot. Then go play Borderlands. → Read More
Google’s semi-secret Nexus One handset has been more or less exhaustively leaked at this point, with very few cats left to let out of the bag. The only two major points left were the tech specs and the release date – and now, even those have made their way out. → Read More
Human-powered mobile answers service ChaCha has raised $7 million funding, according to an SEC filing. The company has confirmed the funding but declines to name investors. This brings ChaCha’s total funding to nearly $70 million.
ChaCha has been the subject of a little bit of ridicule at TechCrunch since its launch, thanks to its entertaining snafus and some issues with its business model. Despite its various problems over the years, the company has been able to raise a boatload of money adding $4 million to the pot earlier this year.
While ChaCha’s service currently attracts about 9 million unique users per month through mobile devices and its website, the model has had some problems ChaCha has cut guides’ payments quite a few times since its inception and was forced to lay off a significant part of its staff earlier this year. The startup recently branched out from the answers engine by launching a digital coupon service. → Read More
The rumor mill has been cranking way too hard over Motorola as of late for us to feel confident in taking a stab at what they may launch, but Motorola has just more or less confirmed that they’ll be launching something at CES. Got any guesses as to what it is? Drop it in the comments. We’ll come back on January 7th, run through all of them, and pick someone at random from those who got it right and send them a box of fun stuff we’ve got laying around the office. → Read More
A lot more people have ordered the Barnes & Noble Nook, first announced on October 20, than the company expected (despite getting panned by the official reviewers). The company had Foxconn, their ODM, build far fewer of them than they should have.
The original plan was to ship pre-orders by November 30 but that date was pushed back to December 7. It took a mere month for the entire order process to break down. Now a small number of pre-orders still haven’t arrived and most brick and mortar stores are sold out and even then they were only available in “higher volume” stores on December 7. → Read More
I have some good news and some bad news for those waiting for their Nooks to be delivered. The good news is I just got word from a B&N VP that if your Nook initially had a pre-Christmas delivery date, it will be there in time for Christmas morning. But this also means that you’re not going to get that $100 BN.com gift card. Sorry. But at least your significant other will be unwrapping a Nook instead of a lame IOW certificate.
Also, new orders will not ship out until February 1, 2010 so you may want to hold on to your money a bit longer. Your local B&N store might get a few before then.
B&N’s full statement is after the jump. → Read More
Some of the older CrunchGear readers will surely remember the Pyramidtalk, a clock that verbally announced the time and other information. Seiko started selling the clock in 1984, and it turned out to be a big worldwide hit, with sales ballooning to 200,000 units per year at its peak. And now, just in time for Christmas, consumers (in Japan, at least) can lay their hands on an updated version [JP]. → Read More
The first batch of 150 tickets to attend the Crunchies Awards celebrating the best tech accomplishments of 2009 are on sale now, courtesy of Eventbrite.
The Crunchies Awards will be held at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco on Friday, January 8, 2010 at 7:30 pm PST. Orchestra seats are $75 and Balcony seats are $45. Along with our co-hosts, GigaOm and VentureBeat, we will announce the winners from 18 different award categories live on stage.
We welcome back the Richter Scales as part of our evening’s festivities. → Read More
Viliv is on a steady roll releasing hot portable computers and in just a couple of weeks at CES, we’ll see the company’s next creation dubbed the N5 with the already announced S10. I can’t wait. → Read More
Yesterday, Blippy opened its doors beyond a private group of users it had been testing with. Their invites went quickly (we have more below), and despite the obviously controversial idea of opening your credit card purchasing data to your social graph, a lot of users jumped in and started sharing data. So many, in fact, that Blippy is already tracking well over $1 million in sales, we’re told.
Obviously, that’s a big difference from Blippy actually making $1 million, but eventually, that’s the idea. Still, the fact that users are willing to show off about 25,000 different purchases on the service shows that not everyone is so opposed to the idea. → Read More
Aol is telling a good story, but Citi analyst Mark Mahaney isn’t buying it. AOL is probably the toughest Internet turnaround story, he says in a report today, citing “28% Y/Y decline in its Subscriber base and 38% Y/Y decline in its EBITDA.” He recommends people buy Yahoo, which “will almost surely revert to growth before AOL.”
Mahaney also notes that Aol was the only top 5 web property in the U.S. to have year over year declines in visitors.
On the upside, Aol’s management team is prohibited from large cash acquisitions: “Per the terms of an existing credit facility, AOL can use no more than $100MM a year in cash for the purpose of an acquisition. Given the relatively unsuccessful large acquisitions of AOL in recent years (e.g., Bebo for approximately $700MM), we interpret this M&A cash constraint as something of a good thing near-term for AOL.”
Barclays analyst Douglas Anmuth was similarly bearish on AOL a couple of weeks ago. → Read More
What’s the phrase? Oh, yeah: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. BlackBerry went down yesterday across North and South America. Users couldn’t send or receive e-mail, and some complained that they couldn’t connect to the Internet. It’s the second time in a week that BlackBerry has failed. Considering how important the service is to some people—I dare you to go to Wall Street and not see everyone using the device—you really do wonder: how long will people tolerate this shoddy service? It also raises the related question of, How wise is it to rely on “the cloud” to host all of your important data? Surely you wouldn’t leave “mission critical” information in the hands of someone else, someone who’s unsettling opaque when it comes to explaining outages? → Read More
The reports from a few days ago that the Jajah deal with O2 closed at $200 million were correct. Telefónica Europe (aka O2) just announced that it bought Jajah for 145 million Euros ($207 million) in an all-cash deal.
Jajah, which provides Internet calling services and thus competes with Skype, was on the block since at least November (which TechCrunch was first to report on), following Google’s purchase of much-smaller Gizmo5. → Read More
He’ll be back: The awesome 1/1 scale Gundam statue that was erected on Tokyo’s artificial island Odaiba in June and that was deconstructed in September this year, will be seen again in its full glory. We reported several times about the statue, which stands 60 feet tall and shows some cool special effects (see video below). → Read More
Well, Rupert Murdoch is going to love this. More people around the world get their news online from Google News than from CNN or the news properties of the New York Times. In November, 2009, according to comScore, Google News attracted 100 million unique visitors worldwide, making it a larger news site than CNN (66 million) or the combined properties of the New York Times (92 million). But do you know who is even larger? Yahoo News, with 138 million unique visitors worldwide. Funny how you never hear Murdoch complaining about Yahoo News.
Still, the top two sources of news online are Yahoo News and Google News, followed by the New York Times sites and CNN (China’s QQ.com News would come in fifth with 53 million visitors a month, followed by the BBC and MSN News with about 48 million each—the Wall Street Journal Online is way down the list with only 6.8 million). Google News is the orange line in the chart. → Read More
The live video streaming application Qik has just been approved in the App Store and should be available shortly, we’ve learned. The company submitted the app a couple weeks ago following the approval of Ustream’s live streaming application, and as expected, Apple also had no problem with it now. This marks a change from Apple, which previously was blocking all apps that did live video (recording) streaming.
Apparently, the way these streaming apps work is using a restricted API (a screen capture API) to get around the fact that Apple doesn’t grant them access to the video APIs for live capture and streaming. But Apple has suggested that it will no longer enforce protecting this API and in the future should open more that allow for live video streaming. → Read More
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