Six months ago I wrote about a startup called Shopkick (it was then called MOBshop). The company won’t disclose much of what their eventual product will be, but they’ve attracted some of the most high profile investors in Silicon Valley: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Reid Hoffman.
Here’s what CEO Cyriac Roeding will say about Shopkick which is scheduled to launch in 2010: they aim to bridge the gap between the mobile phone and the physical shopping worlds.
In the meantime they are launching CauseWorld, “the first mobile application that let’s you do good deeds simply for walking into a store.” The application should be available on the iPhone appstore later today. Android is coming soon, along with more mobile platforms.
CauseWorld app users earn “karma points” when they walk into stores and check in with their cell phone. No purchase is required at any store, and karma points can be redeemed nine predefined good causes. Big brands like Kraft Foods and Citi (both are on board) then turn the karmas into real dollar donations to those causes. Food for poor families, water in Sudan, trees in the Amazon, etc. are examples of the causes. → Read More
Vienna, Austria-based tunesBag is opening up the public beta version of its social music service today, after allowing access by invitation only for the past year or so.
The launch has been a long time coming, considering the fact that the startup has already produced a fully functional web client, and Adobe-AIR powered desktop client and applications for iPhone, Facebook and Boxee since its founding in late 2008. → Read More
We’ve written about the social city and nightlife mobile app, buzzd, which pulls its data from Twitter and other buzzd users, for a bigger picture of the places that are hot in a given location. The mobile app, which has been available for iPhone and BlackBerry users, is launching an Android app as well as rolling out new versions of its existing smartphone apps.
The buzzd network compiles information from its base of over a half-million users, Twitter, and other real-time sources to provide users with activity updates for almost half a million venues across the United States and Canada. You download the app and it will bring up a list of venues close to you that are currently popular based on people talking about them on Twitter and Buzzd. Using Twitter’s new Geolocation API, the app can even pull the exact locations of your friends on Twitter. → Read More
Earlier this year, we reported twice about Japan’s serious plans to go to outer space to generate solar energy and then beam it back to Mother Earth. And today, Sharp has shown the first solar cell that’s not only bendable (we’ve seen that before) but that also withstands conditions in space. In addition, the company says those cells boast a record-high solar efficiency of 36%. → Read More
Canadian telecom company Mitel Networks Corporation yesterday filed for an IPO of up to $230 million. The company, which provides integrated communication services primarily to SMBs, said it plans to use proceeds from the offering to reduce debts by repaying its revolving credit and loans, and for working capital and general corporate purposes, including potential acquisitions.
Mitel’s IPO would be the largest ever initial public offering by an Ottawa-based company, according to Ottawa Citizen. No pricing terms were disclosed. → Read More
A hacker, Labba, and his buddies have cracked the Kindle’s ebook DRM, essentially allowing folks to extract the text of Amazon’s AZW files into a PDF for viewing on any reader. The hackers have reverse engineered the ebook code and very close to a formal, software-based solution. → Read More
According to the Mercury News, cops in San Jose will soon be wearing head-mounted video cameras to record their interaction with civilians. The devices will sit above their ears and they will be activated whenever they speak with a citizen or suspect. The videos will then be uploaded to a central server. Presumably these things turn off when the officers are in the toilet.
Why is this happening? Because people don’t trust cops right now. The system, called AXON, can also attach to other parts of the body. → Read More
Those wacky NookDevs have hacked the Nook to within an inch of its life, created a softroot for those who don’t want to crack open their Nook cases to get at the soft and sweet MicroSD card inside. The softroot essentially “jailbreaks” the Nook, allowing you to install homebrew software onto the device.
You can download the software here and I’ve mirrored it here so we don’t destroy their server (although I doubt there are enough hardcore Nookers right now). You should check back with the NookDevs often and always. → Read More
Most people would probably view a hardcore, 16 hour-a-day addiction to World of Warcraft as a bad thing. That was certainly the case for Hubert Thieblot a few years ago, when he dropped out of school and his parents decided to kick him out of the house because he was playing so much. Flash forward five years. Thieblot has managed to turn his addiction into a thriving company called Curse that generated over $3 million in revenue this year. Today, the company is disclosing a $6 million Series B round it closed in early 2009 with participation from Ventech Capital, AGF Private Equity, and SoftTech VC (Jeff Clavier). The round brings Curse’s total funding to $11 million, after a $5 million Series A round in 2007 led by AGF Private Equity.
In some senses, Curse is akin to a SourceForge for computer games, in that it offers a directory of plugins that players can use to customize and enhance their PC games. Many of the site’s users are World of Warcraft fans, who have made Curse.com the definitive site for WoW add-ons. Alongside its directory, Curse also makes a native client players can use to manage their plugins. → Read More
Cc:Betty, a free service that helps organize group email threads, has rolled out an iPhone app to help declutter your email on your mobile device. Cc:Betty’s app is a group-based email application that breaks email conversations into collated, threaded discussions.
An account can be created right from the app, and new group discussions can be created, using the iPhone address book to access your contacts. Photos can be easily attached as well and new contacts can be added to discussions via your address book. Any discussions, or other content such as attachments a person has in their Cc:Betty.com account are automatically synced to their iPhone. When one of your discussions is updated, you’ll get a push-notification to your iPhone so you can access important information on the go. → Read More
Survey results published by Harris Interactive suggest that adult Internet users are now spending an average of 13 hours a week online. About 14% spends 24 or more hours a week online, while 20% of adult Internet users are online for only two hours or less a week.
To put things in perspective: Harris surveyed 2,029 adults by telephone for an entire week in July and October 2009, and has been doing these types of polls since 1995.
Harris concludes that the average hours spent online have increased from 7 hours from 1999 to 2002, to between 8 and 9 hours in 2003 to 2006, and surged after that. → Read More
I don’t have kids (yet), but I’d be all over this if I did … and if I were a native English speaker: TC50 finalist Story Something is cautiously opening up to the masses during the holidays – intentionally.
While the service is still ‘most definitely in beta’ according to co-founder and CEO Jim Rose, it gives you a pretty good idea of what the startup’s building. → Read More
Now you can get the Death Star plans without having to depending on those Bothan spies. Some enterprising publishing company has licensed and released the penultimate Star Wars geek accessory: poster sized blueprints. → Read More
Most people would probably view a hardcore, 16 hour-a-day addiction to World of Warcraft as a bad thing. That was certainly the case for Hubert Thieblot a few years ago, when he dropped out of school and his parents decided to kick him out of the house because he was playing so much. Flash forward five years. Thieblot has managed to turn his addiction into a thriving company called Curse that generated over $3 million in revenue this year. Today, the company is disclosing a $6 million Series B round it closed in early 2009 with participation from Ventech Capital, AGF Private Equity, and SoftTech VC (Jeff Clavier). The round brings Curse’s total funding to $11 million, after a $5 million Series A round in 2007 led by AGF Private Equity.
In some senses, Curse is akin to a SourceForge for computer games, in that it offers a directory of plugins that players can use to customize and enhance their PC games. Many of the site’s users are World of Warcraft fans, who have made Curse.com the definitive site for WoW add-ons. Alongside its directory, Curse also makes a native client players can use to manage their plugins. → Read More
Everyday I troll SEC Form D Filings to discover new startups, fundings and investments. I put everything I find into CrunchBase.
For everyone else I give you the daily digest, a quick hit of the latest and greatest SEC Form D filings in the TechCrunch sphere: → Read More
So it’s the end of 2009 and an appropiate time to take stock. We’re not going to bore you with a long analysis of the year. Suffice it to say that funding for startup tech companies remains tight. And when VCs are running out of LPs to go to, you really know it is. The VC model is still finding its feet in a market where exits are still not that clear. For many companies 2009 was a nightmare – especially the first half. But anecdotal evidence I’ve been picking up suggests that confidence in the European tech scene re-started tentatively after the summer. Hoepfully, conversations that have been going on for the last few months will see the light of day in new announcements, launches and, I daresay, one or two exits in the new year.
The European scene remains disparate and spread out. The view that it should somehow magic together it’s own version of Silicon Valley into existance is highly misplaced. As I coninute to argue, Europe is a network of ‘tech hubs’ (something I hope to help with in some small way with my personal involvement in TechHub). But initiatives like the recent SeedSummt are enlivening the startup scene once more, along with Europe’s lively event scene.
But before we hit the new year running, let’s look at a handful of companies that aimed for the moon only hit the next field in 2009. One of the things we don’t do in Europe enough is mull over what hasn’t worked. We need to get very much more real about these kinds of things if anyone is to learn anything. So here is a stab at just that. → Read More
Much of the web is based around clickstreams. The latest version of Whrrl, a location-based application by Pelago, wants to take that concept into the real world, with “footstreams.”
Up until this point, since the launch of version 2 of its iPhone app earlier this year, Whrrl’s focus has been on storytelling. That is, allowing users to tag places they’re at with stories and pictures. But the latest version shifts the focus towards creating a digital record of all the places you go in the real world, Pelago CEO Jeff Holden tells us. “It’s about places, not location,” he says. → Read More
2500 years ago, Europe was a filthy mess of dirt roads, battered and cracked by hooves in the summer and rutted by rude wheels in the winter. To travel from the British isles to the tip of the Apennine peninsula would have been the work of months — and messy and rough work at that. Around 450 BC, the Roman Twelve Tables specified (among many other things) the dimensions of roads, and methods borrowed from the Carthaginians standardized their construction to some extent. Mere centuries later, an unprecedented network of trade and communication had been established, some parts of which are still in use today. The Roman roads improved the entire world, and the fact that they were built, managed, and maintained by the Romans was as effective a weapon for Rome as the gladii wielded by the legions who patrolled them. In the year MMIX Google revealed Chrome OS to the world. It was no more remarkable to onlookers than a single stone-paved road might have been to a Roman citizen in 400 BC. A decade or two from now, an historian might look back on the first few years of Google’s expansion and think: how similar was that Roman’s limited scope of observation to our own! For he saw a road, not the beginnings of an infrastructure which would span continents. And we see a suite of products, vessels for selling ads, not the start of a greater endeavor: a blueprint for connecting humanity in the 21st century. → Read More
Zynga’s massively successful moneymaking machine is about to get another way to reach its millions of avid users. Today, the company is starting to test SMS notifications, allowing a small number of users to receive updates directly to their mobile phones. The first 50 TechCrunch readers to sign up here will be able to try it out for themselves, though it’s limited to Mafia Wars only for now. It’s a feature that’s going to be good news to the game’s millions of addicts and also represents a very important strategic move for the company. Because it’s one more thing that Zynga won’t have to rely on Facebook for.
Zynga’s ties with Facebook run deep. They now share some of the same investors, including Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies which has poured as much as $400 million into Facebook and just led a $180 million round in Zynga. Zynga is rumored to be Facebook’s largest advertiser. → Read More
