Mobile augmented reality networks still have to prove they can live up to the hype, but that isn’t stopping companies from jumping on the bandwagon at increasing rates. Today, Tagwhat is doing just that by launching in private beta (we have invitation codes for readers) for iPhone and Android users.
Powered by Iryss, which also offers customized mobile and AR software integration solutions for enterprises, Tagwhat is a consumer-facing product that allows people to tag real-world locations and attach information, reviews, links, photos, videos, notes and so on to those particular spots, whether tied to their current location or not. → Read More
Whereas Sharp decided to cautiously embrace Android, Toshiba still seems to be firmly in the Windows camp. After releasing the “iPhone killer TG01” on WinMo 6.5 last year, the company announced another Windows Mobile-based cell phone in Japan today (Toshiba is one of Microsoft’s official “Mobile Partners”, after all). → Read More
Goomzee, a Missoula, MT-based developer of a mobile marketing solution that helps real estate professionals connect with potential buyers, announced this morning that it has secured a $1.5 million Series A round of funding led by Highway 12 Ventures along with additional, undisclosed investors in the US and Europe.
Goomzee’s text message marketing product, Realty Connect (warning, annoying auto-starting demo video on this page), enables real estate agents across the United States to connect to potential buyers who have shown an active interest in a property on sale. → Read More
Yellow Media, owner of Yellow Pages Group, is acquiring Canadian Phone Directories Holdings (aka Canpages), a national local search and directories publisher.
The seller is a consortium of investors led by PE firm HM Capital Partners, and the purchase price is approximately $225 million. → Read More
GOOD, the company behind the integrated media platform for “people who give a damn”, has added some serious weight to its leadership team with the addition of three high-profile advisors.
The company announced today that YouTube co-founder and CEO Chad Hurley, Chief Marketing Officer and President, Joint Ventures, PepsiCo Jill Beraud and founder and CEO of DonorsChoose.org Charles Best have joined GOOD’s Advisory Board. → Read More
AllGoob, a French search engine publisher, has raised a €1 million first round with Newfund for its European development and new search engine, wiPikit.
The company is behind job search engine success JobiJoba - which was launched in 2007 and is now one of the largest job databases in France, uniting over 300,000 job offers with 700,000 candidates on the site per month. The site also launched in Belgium in 2008 along with the UK, the US and Spain in 2009. But the investment is curious as JobiJoba is definitely not a lone star in the French market. → Read More
AquaAntics Water Bomb Factory is genius, should win an international peace award DIY: Convert a disposable camera into a slave flash DIY: Get medieval with the Mini-Trebuchet SIMBox, the texting incontinence pants TomTom brings free lifetime traffic and maps to the XL and XXL GPS models → Read More
Billed as an iPad competitor, the WePad is not vaporware, but is in fact, The Chosen One. At least, that’s the view of some, who are hailing the WePad as the saviour of the German print publishing industry.
While Apple is still racing to the wire to secure enough media content partnerships for the iPad before its launch this week, the WePad has already bagged Europe’s biggest publisher, Gruner + Jahr. → Read More
Facebook has lately been ramping up efforts to obtain registered trademarks in the United States and other countries and regions for a number of products and services it offers or intends to offer in the future.
Fresh off the heels of applying for a trademark for Credits, its virtual payment system, the company is now attempting to gain exclusive rights to the use of the term “Facebook Developer Garage”. → Read More
Push Notifications on the iPhone are great, but they can be impossible to manage. That’s why Boxcar, a Push Notification management app, is brilliant, and has long been one of my favorite apps. Unfortunately, as great as it is, like Apple itself, it is also a closed system. But now, it’s opening up.
What I mean by closed system is that Boxcar only serves up notifications for a select few services, such as Twitter and Facebook. But with its new Provider feature (and API), anyone can tap into the Boxcar platform to enable Push Notifications through the service. → Read More
A new take on the group-buying bandwagon launches today, but this one will attempt to address the information overload about offers, known as “voucher fatigue”, while incentivising local businesses. Keynoir is described as a “private buying club meets Woot”, in reference to the tech site which made its name by having just one offer on one decent product a day. The startup even includes aspects of the old Letsbuyit.com.
But this is not a trivial play. Keynoir has already secured £1.3m of investment from PROFounders Capital, investor Jan Riem and Index Ventures (including Dominique Vidal). Serial entrepreneurs Paul Birch and Andrej Henkler participated. Vidal and Sean Seton-Rogers from PROfounders will be joining the board.
The founders are Philip Wilkinson (founder of the UK’s first price comparison engine which later became Kelkoo), Glen Drury (ex-MD Kelkoo Europe and VP Yahoo), and Jan Riem (technology deal maker). It launches in London this week , and plans to exand across the rest of the UK and Europe by the end of the year. → Read More
My bad — maybe.
Earlier today, I reported that Google Buzz, Google’s new social sharing service, was sending less traffic than FriendFeed, a service which has been a ghost town in recent months. It turns out there’s probably a good explanation for this. You see, in January, Google started defaulting all Gmail traffic to the HTTPS (secure) version of its domain. Previously, it was defaulting to the regular HTTP (unsecure) domain. As a result of this change, all traffic referrers are scrubbed before being picked up by services like Google Analytics. → Read More
MySpace’s former GM International Travis Katz left the company shortly after the big executive shakeout in the Spring of 2009.
He spent a few months in Hawaii recharging, and then moved his family to Silicon Valley. Since January he’s been working on a new startup, he says, and he’s teamed up with Ori Zaltzman, the former Chief Architect of Yahoo Boss.
That’s enough of a team to make things really interesting. Particuarly Zaltzman’s deep infrastructure background. → Read More
Battlefield 1943 is now the quickest game in Xbox LIVE’s history to reach 1 million games downloaded. But PC gamers don’t care. We want to play Battlefield 1943, too. It is after all a remake of classic PC game. → Read More
This rather nifty electronics sculpture was created by Artist Steve D’Angelo, as a homage to the classic arcade. This is what I think all synthesizers should look like. [Make: Online] → Read More
Back in fall 2008, we covered the launch of Twilio, a service that gives web developers an API to easily build web apps with telephony features, like audio playback, voice recording, and more recently, SMS messages. Now a new challenger is approaching: a service called Teleku offers many of the same features, but it’s taking a different approach that its founder says makes it more flexible. It’s cash-flow positive, and it was built by one man over the course of two months. Teleku is in a private beta, but you can grab an account by going here and using the code ‘techcrunch’ to sign up.
So how does Teleku differ from Twilio? It’s a matter of flexibility, according to founder (and sole employee) Chris Matthieu. He says that when you use Twilio, it’s an all-in-one deal: you write your code in Twilo’s easy-to-use syntax called TwiML, which is then sent to Twilio’s telephony services in the cloud that are hosted on AWS. → Read More
As a professional social network, LinkedIn hasn’t ignored the mobile interests of its 60 million plus users. The company has consistently updated its sleek iPhone app, recently launching a new version. Last fall, LinkedIn announced that a powerful BlackBerry app would be on its way. And the app is an important connector to the enterprise crowd, which generally tend to use BlackBerry devices. Tonight, the new app officially launches. You can download the app here.
The LinkedIn app for BlackBerry is as feature-rich as its iPhone cousin. You can visualize your feed of network updates, search across direct connections and the entire LinkedIn network, access any of your connections to get get profile information, and message contacts. You can also access your LinkedIn inbox, send and accept invitations and see all of your messages. And the app will suggest new connections to you. → Read More
Buying a flash unit can be expensive, but here’s a cheapskate alternative that will do the job, at least for a while. Plus, you’re recycling a disposable camera into something reusable, and saving all those bits from the landfill. Besides, once you use all of the flash out of one disposable camera, you can always build another one to replace it, and recycle the first one. → Read More
