This may very well be the first time I’ve ever seen Brando sell a product from a big name manufacturer. Normally known for whimsical crap gadgets from faraway lands (and I mean that in the best way possible), the web store is now selling the HTPC-friendly Lenovo Mini Wireless Keyboard for $64. → Read More
Looking at blogs and news sites across the web, it’s clear that many have robust communities with eager, intelligent people looking to contribute. But up until recently, the only way most sites (particularly blogs) allow users to share their thoughts is through comments, which work well enough, but certainly aren’t always perfect. Grogger is a new service that looks to help sites tap into this community knowledge, allowing you to build a site that includes posts written by both you and your audience.
At its core, Grogger is an easy-to-use blogging platform, but rather than only exposing its editing tools to a handful of site administrators, they’re shown to everyone. When a user comes to your Grogger site and writes an entry (called a Grog), you can have it directly posted to your blog, or added to a moderation queue, where your site administrators can approve it. → Read More
JVC in Japan today announced [JP] the NC-SP1, an ultra-slim active speaker that’s just 34mm thick and can be connected to your computer via USB. Marketed as a device that’s particularly suitable for presentations, it supports Windows XP/Vista/7 and Mac OS X 10.4 machines and requires just one USB port. → Read More
Two law firms, Beck & Lee from Miami and The Weston Firm in San Diego, have filed a class action lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court alleging unfair business practices by local business review and rating website operator Yelp.
The plaintiff in the suit, a veterinary hospital in Long Beach, CA, is said to have requested that Yelp remove a negative review from the website, which was allegedly refused by the San Francisco startup, after which its sales representatives repeatedly contacted the hospital demanding payments of roughly $300 per month in exchange for hiding or deleting the review. → Read More
Every entrepreneur is familiar with the moment. The moment when you stumble across an annoying problem – a problem that you’d pay money to solve – and suddenly a synapse fires in your brain.
“Holy crap, if I’d pay money to solve this, so would other people. There’s a business here!”.
It’s the moment that has kick started a million businesses and generated billions of dollars over the decades. And on Sunday evening, not for the first time in what I laughingly call my career, I experienced it. → Read More
9to5Mac found these delightful buttons. What the deuce? It seems that the new iPad SDK 3.2 Beta 3 has some very interesting bits of code and UI components that point to a front facing camera – a boolean called hasFrontCamera – and a boolean for a flash LED (not Adobe Flash) called hasFlash. There are also two buttons in the interface for accepting and declining video chats. → Read More
Get thee to the Wootery! There’s a Woot-Off going on right now (I think it’s a slicer they’re selling now) so get over there ASAP! → Read More
Social sharing is becoming a big contributor to traffic for many sites. While Facebook and Twitter drive more sharing than any other services, Google is trying to compete with Buzz, which is now part of Gmail but shares links to article and blog posts through Google Reader. Over the past month, according to AddThis, sharing through Google Reader is up 35 percent, with a big jump on February 9, the day Buzz launched. This number only measures sharing through the AddThis button, which is on more than 600,000 Websites and gives you the option to share content through more than 200 services. So it is only a proxy for total sharing on Google Reader, but a decent one.
Google Reader still barely registers when compared to Twitter and Facebook, which account for 31 percent and 8 percent of all sharing via AddThis, respectively. But Buzz is definitely giving it a boost. → Read More
Computer equipment maker Buffalo is pretty bullish about USB 3.0. The company today announced a total of five new USB 3.0 HDDs for the Japanese market, namely two “compact models” [JP] (81×130×16mm) and three bigger (45×175×156mm) devices [JP]. The HD-PEU3-BK (pictured above), the compact type, will be available in a version that holds 500 GB (price: $200) and another one with 640GB ($250). → Read More
It’s the type of scenario that keeps even the most seasoned entrepreneurs up at night. Your startup toils away for months on a new product or feature and – boom – a giant like Google comes along and walks all over it.
That appears to be the case for Dublin-based music video site, Muzu TV (see previous TCEU coverage), which today launched its new music video jukebox feature. A sort of Spotify-for-video, it’s not too dissimilar from Google-owned YouTube’s recent disco beta or ‘Music Discovery Project and Playlist Creation Tool’ to give it its full name. → Read More
HyTrust, which helps companies manage and control virtual infrastructure, has secured $10.5 million in Series B funding from Granite Ventures and Cisco Systems. Existing investors Trident Capital and Epic Ventures also participated in the round. The latest round of funding brings the HyTrust’s total funding to $16 million.
HyTrust says it will use the new funding to drive product development and to fuel sales and marketing efforts. HyTrust has developed a policy management system specifically for virtualization, enabling IT departments to control and virtualize servers. → Read More
IT software giant CA is acquiring cloud computing startup 3Tera. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. 3Tera’s product, AppLogic, helps enterprises build and deploy cloud-bases applications both to public and private clouds.
CA is opening up the purse strings to boost its presence in the cloud. The company recently acquired Cassatt, NetQoS and Oblicore. 3Tera allows companies to provision, deploy and scale public and private cloud computing environments. 3Tera also makes it easy for service providers to offer application stacks on demand. 3Tera’s client base includes 80 enterprises and service providers globally, which use the cloud computing technology to provide services to users → Read More
Mobile question and answer startup ChaCha is on a roll, possibly achieving profitability, raising boatloads of money, and even venturing into social media with a Facebook app. Today, ChaCha is getting into the business listings game with local business search company Localeze. Localeze will provide ChaCha’s website with in-depth information about more than 15 million businesses across the country.
ChaCha.com visitors can access the local business listings in a search bar and through a direct listings page. In both cases, they will be served a full content page that includes Google maps, directions, phone, and other contact information. And of course, any questions and answers related to the business can be found on the content pages. Business listings can also be viewed by category and or state and city. Eventually, ChaCha’s listings will be integrated with its chachacoupons.com site. → Read More
HyTrust, which helps companies manage and control virtual infrastructure, has secured $10.5 million in Series B funding from Granite Ventures and Cisco Systems. Existing investors Trident Capital and Epic Ventures also participated in the round. The latest round of funding brings the HyTrust’s total funding to $16 million.
HyTrust says it will use the new funding to drive product development and to fuel sales and marketing efforts. HyTrust has developed a policy management system specifically for virtualization, enabling IT departments to control and virtualize servers. → Read More
Passlogix, an enterprise software company focused on simplifying access to company resources, is announcing an authentication product which will allow users to log on to Windows with any type of identification device–including national ID badges, access cards, one-time password tokens, and biometrics. The product, v-GO Universal Authentication Manager, utilizes the customers’ existing infrastructure while also leveraging corporate directories; thus lowering the total cost of ownership from an average of $150 per user to $15. → Read More
A new website launches in the UK today that uses “the power of group-buying to save consumers up to 90% off the best things to do, see, eat and buy.”
Sounds familiar? Yep folks, it’s yet another Groupon clone.
Only this time, Groupola.com is already making claims to be biggest group buying site in the UK. That’s because it’s launching simultaneously in 8 of the largest cities across the UK, including London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff and Edinburgh.
This makes it immediately standout from rivals such as Berlin-based MyCityDeal and Groupon itself, both of which have a UK reach currently limited to London. → Read More
KODA.us, a social recruitment service for employers to recruit young professionals, has received an additional $1.5 million injection of private angel funding.
Back in August last year it raised $1 million in angel funding on top of an existing $2 million, so it now has, you guessed it, $4.5m in capital.
KODA wants to bring social networking and job recruiting together into one unified service, claiming that it is “more professional than Facebook but more personal than LinkedIn”. The jury is out on whether this market space actually exists. → Read More
Sometimes I despair of Europe, even though I’m proud of what can be achieved here. But really, guys, can we get it together?
At the same time the European Union is investigating a pretty flimsy anti-trust complaint against Google, it’s conspiciously ignoring a case in Italy where three Google executives have been found guilty on a ridiculous charge. Here is the bizarre story.
An Italian court yesterday convicted three (ex) Google executives in a trial over a video showing a teenager being bullied. The Google Italy employees were accused of breaking Italian law by allowing the video of bullying of a teenager with Down’s Syndrome to be posted on YouTube in late 2006.
Despite the fact that Google removed the video within hours of being notified of its existence, Judge Oscar Magi (pictured) absolved the three of defamation but convicted them of privacy violations. The three executives have received a suspended six-month sentence, while a fourth defendant was acquitted.
Google has responded in a justifiably vociferous blog post calling this a “serious threat to the web in Italy”. Frankly they are right. → Read More
Chip Shotz Desktop Golf Game: You know it’s fun because there’s a Z in the name Custom Skullcandy headphones look, sound great Kaufladen $500 fruit stands for kids Ecolok’s flat-pack furniture will be handy in our dark, overcrowded future Lensbaby turns 6 and you get the presents → Read More
Former CEO of CBS Interactive Quincy Smith has joined with CBS Interactive EVP Michael Marquez and music industry veteran dealmaker Fred Davis to launch CODE Advisors, a new Silicon Valley and New York based investment bank.
As with all investment banks, CODE Advisors will look to advise companies on mergers and acquisitions and capital raising, for a fee. But the company also wants to be a long term partner for buyers and sellers, acting as a sort of outsourced business and corporate development group. This is something most banks promise, but few deliver on. Unless you’re a high velocity buyer like Google or Microsoft, in which case you get all the attention you want and more. → Read More
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