Watch out Meebo, there’s a new kid on the block. Israeli startup Wibiya, which publicly launched its web-based, customizable toolbar to publishers in January of this year, is seeing impressive traffic for a year-old company.
According to Quantcast, Wibiya is seeing 151 million monthly visitors to its toolbars. In contrast, Quantcast also reports that Meebo is currently seeing 143 million monthly visitors. Currently, Wibiya has more than 70,000 active websites using its toolbar, including TheStreet, TheOnion, Playboy, Philly.com, JellyBelly.com and more. Wibiya says that nearly 1000 new websites are adding the toolbar per day. → Read More
When we first profiled Map My Tracks, a web service which provides real-time GPS tracking for cyclists, runners and other sporting types, we liked the concept and user experience but were critical of the subscription model employed. That was back in February 2008 and since then the service, developed by UK-based digital agency Tinderhouse, has ditched premium for a combination of free for unlimited live tracking and a one-off fee for its iPhone app.
This week also sees the fruition of its first major partnership: An official iPhone/iPod touch app for Team Sky that helps fans stay up-to-date with all of the pro cycling team’s activities. Additionally, and this is potentially the clever part, the Team Sky app includes a feature called ‘pro rider tracking’, which as you may have guessed is a white labeled version of the training aspect of Map My Tracks. → Read More
The back-and-forth jabbing between Motorola and Apple is like the Cantina gunfight between Han Solo and Greedo — depending on who you talk to, who shot first seems to vary.
The way I saw it unfold: Motorola ran a full page ad in the New York Times proclaiming that you can hold the Droid X “any way you like“. Apple responded by adding the Droid X to the list of phones they demonstrate as being death-grippable. And now, Motorola returns with another ad.. → Read More
Time, Inc. and Apple are going through a rough patch. Time wants to be able to sell digital subscriptions of its properties, including Sports Illustrated, via the iTunes Store, but Apple won’t let that happen. This puts Time in a weird spot: it can either sell its magazines like any company would sell any widget on the iTunes Store (giving Apple complete control in the process), it can negotiate a new situation with Apple so that it can take control of the selling of digital subscriptions, or it can try to strong-arm Apple into getting its way—perhaps by pulling all of its content off the iTunes Store. → Read More
Last year, we covered the launch of Home-Account, a mortgage search and counseling service. Though launched in the implosion of the housing market, the site raised funding from an impressive group of investors, including Charles River Ventures, Marc Benioff, Ron Conway, Mark Pincus, and Jeff Clavier. One of the seed investors in the round was personal finance site Bills.com, which put close to a million dollars in Home-Account. Today, Home-Account is announcing that it has been acquired by Bills.com. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
A Kayak.com for mortgages, Home-Account offers a free and paid service for those who are looking for mortgage or to re-finance. Home-Account helps consumers find the right mortgage for their needs and credit histories from its partner lenders. Home-Account doesn’t make commissions from the buyers or the lenders, like some online mortgage services like LendingTree.com and LowerMyBills.com. It makes money solely from the consumer subscriptions. Home-Account’s founder Mark Goldstein says that since the company’s launch last year, the startup helped close “hundreds of mortgages.” → Read More
You can’t say Toshiba isn’t following up on its announcement in April to enter the 3D game. Apart from the pretty awesome (but pricey) CELL 3D TVs the company showed today, Toshiba is also ready to roll out [JP] some more affordable 3D LCDs for the rest of us. There will be a 46- and a 55-incher in the REGZA F1 series and three models (42, 47, and 55 inches) in the REGZA ZG1 series. → Read More
Need a camcorder or a Wi-Fi camera? Samsung has you covered. Sadly, these two bog standard cameras come from our friends at Samsung look a little plain but both record in HD and the camera supports Wi-Fi uploads. The camera, the ST80, costs $249. The camera, the HMX-E10, costs $199. → Read More
You can always count on Hunch founder Chris Dixon for interesting Tweets. He just sent out this one:
turns out patent trolling might not pay. Intellectual Ventures has negative 78% return.http://bit.ly/bSfamC
The link is a PDf download of a document from the University of Texas Management Company listing all of its private investments in venture funds and private equity funds, along with their internal rates of return (IRR). One of the worst performers is Intellectual Ventures, the patent portfolio fund started by Nathan Myrhvold that has a reputation for patent extortion. One of its funds, the Invention Development Fund I, has a negative 73 percent IRR (Dixon mistakenly thought it was negative 78 percent, but close enough). Another fund, the Invention Investment Fund II, has a negative 10 percent return. The two funds combined are delivering a negative 36.66 percent IRR for the University of Texas. → Read More
The importation, sale, or advertising of the R4 card, sometimes (often?) used to pirate Nintendo DS games, is now illegal in the UK. Defendants tried to argue that the R4 shouldn’t be demonized, much less made illegal, because it can also be used to play homebrew software. The High Court disagreed. → Read More
Weebly, the startup that lets you build a website with an easy drag-and-drop interface, is looking to help you give your site a little extra flair: they’ve just launched a new image editor called ImagePerfect that allows users to craft nifty custom header images with a few clicks. It may not be a Photoshop killer, but it took Weebly CEO David Rusenko all of one minute to build the Mustang image above (in other words, it’s pretty easy to use).
No, this isn’t anywhere near the first web-based image editor (also see services like Aviary and Google-owned Picnik). But it is tightly integrated into the Weebly experience — instead of kicking you into another window when you go to edit an image, ImagePerfect slides nicely into view, allowing you to modify your image in context with the rest of the page. → Read More
The 3D TV boom isn’t ending. As announced back in April, Toshiba Japan today showed [press release in English] a total of three new Cell Regza LCD TVs, and all of them are 3D enabled and full HD. These are the “CELL REGZA SLIM” 46XE2 (46 inches) and CELL REGZA SLIM 55XE3 (55 inches) plus another 55-inch model, the CELL Regza 55X2 (pictured). → Read More
Mobile advertising is currently a billion dollar market and we’ve witnessed tech giants like Google and Apple move into the space with the acquisitions of mobile ad networks AdMob and Quattro Wireless, respectively. AdMob is now part of Google’s mobile advertising business and Apple is using Quattro to power its new ad format, iAds. But there is another player that has silently been growing its business under the radar to become a dominant network in mobile advertising: Millennial Media. Currently, Millenial has the largest U.S. reach out of all the networks in terms of audience size according to Nielsen; with ads reaching 63 million of a total of 77 million mobile web users in the U.S., or 81% of the U.S. mobile web.
Despite being one of the “big three” in the still-small mobile ad space, Millennial is relatively unknown, while its competitors have seen prominent coverage in the media. Besides its monthly reports on mobile ad traffic, Millennial has avoided some of the drama that has been taking place in the industry. I caught up with the company’s CEO and co-founder Paul Palmieri to talk about how Millennial catapulted from a bootstrapped Baltimore-based startup to the largest independent mobile advertising company. → Read More
GoodData is rapidly becoming a key example of the technology innovation emerging from Central Europe – and laying a bet on Europe seems to be paying off for Fidelity Growth Partners Europe, the venture and growth equity investor, which backs European entrepreneurs exclusively.
It’s invested $2 million in the startup, the second investment for the £100 million fund, leading an overall $6.5 million investment round. GoodData provides an on-demand business intelligence services. Other returning investors include General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz and Windcrest Partners. → Read More
Vodafone has launched Mobile Clicks 2010, a competition to identify and reward innovative mobile Internet startups. Now in its third year, the competition will be open to any fledgling mobile Web startup – provided your market is The Netherlands, Portugal or the UK.
Vodafone has set aside a prize fund of €150,000 (2/3 of which will go to the overall winner, the remaining €50,000 to the runner-up), based on these five criteria: originality, creativity and innovation; technical and operational feasibility; economic and financial viability; value to end-users; and the quality of the management team.
Startups can apply here until midnight, August 22nd, 2010. → Read More
Is there any happier place on the internet than Make? Don’t answer that. Just watch this video.
What you’re looking at is a self-proclaimed “svelt and neatly pocketable” option for playing old-skool ROMs on-the-go (ah, I remember the days when these romz were nü skool, and were known as cartz, not romz. That’s right, I put 3 ‘z’s and an umlaut in that sentence) made from a bicycle handle holder for a Nexus One, a Nexus One, a Wiimote, and an elastic band. In my books, that’s makes baza210 a definite candidate for a gold star. → Read More
Details are pretty light on this one, but it looks like this may be the successor to the cheap-n-cheerful myTouch slide.
Android Central — who sourced the images — also say that there is a fair chance that this will be T-mobile’s first HSPA+ phone, bringing with it noticeably faster download speeds (in compatible areas). → Read More
In 1998 Lego introduced the MINDSTORMS product line. The NXT is a brick-shaped computer that can take in sensory input, control motors and most importantly in this case, play back sounds. The NXT-606 drum machine is based on this unit and I must say it sounds pretty good. You can even get a set yourself and build your own. And why shouldn’t you do that? Click for the video → Read More
Panasonic caused a splash in the blogosphere yesterday when it announced the world’s first consumer 3D camera, the HDC-SDT750, for the American market (release in October). The device was announced [JP] today in Japan as well, but Panasonic made some changes. And it showed another model, too, the HDC-TM650 (pictured), which hasn’t been announced for other markets thus far. → Read More
Just in case all you Droid Incredible owners were jealous of the Galaxy S Froyo leak I wrote about earlier, I thought I’d better let you know that you can has Froyo, too.
Those wonderful guys n gals over at XDA Forums have managed to source a ROM based on the upcoming OTA release for the Droid Incredible, and it’s a wee ripper, with a whole heap of new additions, outlined after the break. → Read More
Mobile Roadie, a startup that helps anyone develop and create iPhone and Android apps, has launched a more customizable version of their app builder today, called Mobile Roadie Pro.
The idea Mobile Roadie Pro is to offers clients more creative control over the development of their app, offering customization of menu layout, colors, buttons, and fonts. Pro also supports multiple categories of content, a global search for users, and newly designed landscape views. And the functionality that is included in Mobile Roadie’s basic app creator is also available. For example, the apps can feature integration with YouTube, Brightcove, Flickr, Twitpic, Ustream, Topspin, Google News, RSS, Twitter, and Facebook. → Read More
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