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
Paris-based Semiocast, which helps brands understand and interact with real-time Web services, has performed a semantic and quantitative study of Twitter based on an analysis of 2.8 million tweets.
Turns out roughly half the tweets posted on the micro-sharing service are in English, down 25% from last year, even though the company is based in the U.S. and has more users and momentum in English-speaking countries than anywhere else on the planet. → Read More
Twones started life as a FriendFeed-type service that aggregated various music services into a single stream, which we dubbed a social music feed when we first caught wind of it.
Problem was, the startup says, since users generally couldn’t play the music on their site and were constantly being directed to third-party websites and apps for streaming, people never really got that FriendFeed experience that would compel them to come back.
The Dutch company figured they needed to do something else, and the result of their overhauled strategy will be going live in alpha mode this morning. The short version: it’s Delicious-type bookmarking meets StumbleUpon-type discovery for online music. → Read More
Citrix Online has announced the acquisition of Paglo Labs. The deal was completed in early 2010 and no financial terms have been disclosed. Paglo’s entire team has joined Citrix Online; Paglo CEO Brian de Haaff is now senior product director, IT Services for Citrix Online. The deal was announced concurrently with the launch of GoToManage, a new Citrix Online Product based on Paglo’s software.
Citrix Online is a market leader in SaaS web-based technical solutions. Its GoToAssist software allows customers to interact directly with a clients computer, resolving issues remotely. Paglo Labs is a leader in IT Management SaaS. Customers are able to monitor, analyze and manage their devices, networks, server, logs and more. → Read More
Skullcandy headphones sound good, that’s pretty much a given. And while the styling is cool and everything, they seem a bit.. generic. Don’t worry though, you can get your awesome cans and be individual too. One crafty DIY person is selling customized Skullcandy SK-Pro headphones – but you better hurry, she/he is only making three pairs. → Read More
Allergic to Apple Stores, like me? Not to worry. Tim Cook, COO at Apple, has said (though there is no direct quote at the moment) that Apple will indeed be selling the iPad at places like Best Buy and other partners. This will likely follow a period of Apple Store-only availability, as the sales process is more fully fleshed out and the world becomes more familiar with the device.
This isn’t too much of a surprise; after all, they sell other Apple products at Best Buy. The iPad may be Apple’s baby now, but after a little time on the market it’ll be well-understood enough to have a big yellow tag under it. → Read More
These clever little German kids toys from Kaufladen cost about $400 and are pretty silly but I think the best part is when DaddyTypes writes:
Kids in the US get play kitchens. Kids in Germany get play sales kiosks. Which country has a childhood obesity problem and which one has already pulled out of the recession? That’s what I thought.
So we’ve got some official news from LG and some, shall we say, unofficial news. First, they’ve put out a nice-looking little CULV-based 11.6-inch ultralight laptop. You can get it with a Core2 Duo as well, but I’m thinking they offer CULV for a reason: battery life. At any rate, now you’ve got one more lappy to choose from. Specs below.
Also, someone accidentally hit the “share” button on a Google Docs spreadsheet, where a few interesting little tidbits were revealed. Actually, pretty predictable tidbits, but if you’re an HDTV fanatic, they’ll be nice to know. → Read More
In the future, when overpopulation has forced us all to live in 6×6-foot pods, flat pack furniture will be indispensable. You’ll wake up, collapse your bed, and pop open a chair and coffee table for your morning bowl of nutrient gel. The hidden Illuminati of the world are already planning for this and hoarding them, which explains why you can’t order anything from Ecolok’s site, a company which produces tasteful and practical flat-pack stuff. → Read More
Sharpcast’s SugarSync,, an application that synchronizes data across desktop computers, laptops, mobile phones, and even televisions, is making it easier for users to backup their data via email. The startup is launching an “Upload by Email” feature that lets users store email attachments in their SugarSync account with the ease of sending an email.
The new feature allows a SugarSync user to sync any email attachment to a dedicated folder in their SugarSync account by simply forwarding it to a special email address. Instantly, the file(s) is available on all synced devices and accounts. For example, if a user receives an email with many attachments, they can simply forward it to their SugarSync email address (comprised of random numbers and letters for spam protection). All attachments will transfer to their SugarSync account.For added security, SugarSync will scan all file attachments for viruses prior to syncing, and certain file types are not accepted (e.g., .exe, .cmd, .bat) to prevent malicious files from landing in an account. → Read More
