If you’re reading into the OfferPal layoffs story that the ‘offer wall’ model itself is what is stuttering, think again.
With $1M in funding under its belt, Israeli MATOMY is announcing today the ‘Engage Bar‘, an offer wall based JavaScript widget that I expect many publishers will clamor for.
If you’re an offer wall hater though, start sharpening your pitchfork. → Read More
Voice search on mobile phones is increasingly becoming a viable alternative to pecking away on your tiny, touchscreen keyboard. Google has great voice search in both its iPhone and Android apps. Apple just bought Siri, which is a voice-powered personal search assistant. And then there is Vlingo, a Cambridge, Mass.-based voice search company backed by Charles River Ventures and Yahoo.
Today… → Read More
Drugstore.com, Alice.com and other online retailers of everyday essentials, a new challenger with a short, pretty dotcom name just hit the Web. The founders of Diapers.com this morning formally launched Soap.com, a new ecommerce site that enables people to buy household necessities, skin and hair care products and whatnot at competitive prices.
We reported that the site was due for launch last… → Read More
Mobile ad network Millennial Media, which claims that its network reaches 82 percent of 72 million mobile web users in the U.S., is reporting that globally, Apple OS requests are up by 36 percent in June, after dropping 33 percent in May.
Android requests continued to rise, and grew another 23 percent month over month. Android is now up a whopping 439% since January. iPad requests are also… → Read More
Warner Bros. and Netflix this morning announced an expansion of the companies’ existing streaming content agreement, adding a slew of catalog TV shows, including drama series “Nip/Tuck,” “Veronica Mars,” “Pushing Daisies” and “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” to those already available to watch instantly at Netflix.
Netflix has acquired streaming rights to said shows and more for a period… → Read More
Over the last few weeks, the New England sports press has been scratching their heads over mysterious T-shirts they received from The Patriots that were emblazoned with the words, “HELP VINCE“. The shirts obviously refer to NFL star Vince Wilfork, but give no indication as to what he needs help with. As it turns out, he’s “lost” his Super Bowl Ring, and he needs help finding it — and the… → Read More
New York City to keep track of water use with wireless monitors Hands-free “book stand” for iPad usage USB Clip memory stick – why didn’t I think of that? SNES bed – for those who like sleeping alone This ceramic electric kettle is elegant – and gorgeous → Read More
Trilliant, a California-based provider of smart grid solutions that enhance energy efficiency, utility operations, and renewable resource integration, this morning announced that it has secured a whopping $106 million in funding from a global syndicate of industry and financial big-names.
The round was led by Investor Growth Capital, VantagePoint Venture Partners, ABB and GE and will reportedly… → Read More
One of the first games scheduled to come out for the Nintendo 3DS, is Kid Icarus:Uprising. It’s an interesting story about how the game was developed, given that the president of Nintendo personally asked game designer Masahiro Sakurai to come up with a title to be launched with the 3DS. → Read More
ZEM headphones are a new product created by an audio researcher, who claims to have come up with a noise cancellation technique that doesn’t require specialized electronics in order to work. This makes the headphones lighter and cheaper, but sometimes products like this oversell and under deliver. → Read More
Sometimes I want to buy something like a blender or a car or a washing machine. And sometimes my wonderful and loving mother (her birthday is coming up) finds out because I accidentally tell her, or my dad does, or she uses that mom ESP thing that she used to find out I was hiding beer in my closet in high school.
Anyway, she finds out. And then I can’t buy the one I want to buy, the shiny one on… → Read More
Perhaps you heard, Apple is having a little press conference on Friday. The reason? Officially, it’s about the iPhone 4. That’s all they’ll say. But everyone knows the slightly more detailed reason: the iPhone 4′s antenna.
The only details Apple is giving out about the event is that it’s going to take place on their campus on Friday morning at 10 AM PT. But talking to some other people who got… → Read More
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1665301&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1 PAY & SIT: the private bench (HD) from Fabian Brunsing on Vimeo. This is something you’d expect to see in the comedy “Park & Rec”, not from a designer in Europe. At any rate, the “Pay & Sit” bench is a… → Read More
Geeks generally aren’t associated with drinking wine; soda, beer, sometimes even mead, but rarely do you connect wine drinking with being a geek. Mike James worked really hard to change that perception, and made great strides in bringing a more civilized drink to the unwashed masses. He was at least partly successful, and became known for producing limited runs with names like Player 1, and Boss… → Read More
Less then seven months after it was acquired by Telefónica Europe (aka O2), for $207 million, VoIP service Jajah is launching its first integration with the large European carrier. O2 subscribers in Germany will now be able to designate up to five friends abroad as their Global Friends; Jajah will assign each of those friends local numbers, allowing you to call internationally from your mobile… → Read More
I’d buy it. But I’d install it in my secret room, where all my Pac-Man ephemera and cartridge mobiles are hung. $20,000 is a lot for an unofficially Super Nintendo-themed bed, though. Do they think that the SNES generation grew up stupid?! Even if it does come with two iPad docks and a 250-watt amplifier with four speakers (!), that’s a lot of money. If you’re into it… → Read More
Gendai Games, a startup that offers a simple game creation tool, has raised over $1 million in Series A funding led by DFJ Mercury with Steamboat Ventures, DFJ Frontier and ff Asset Management as well as angel investors Paul Bricault, Paige Craig, Tom McInerney, Josh Resnick and and Mark Suster participating in the round.
The game creation tool, called GameSalad, is allows non-programmers to… → Read More
Well, I might have recommended a Droid X for big-phone-lovin’ fandroids out there… but now that I’ve read about Motorola’s insane eFuse tampering-countermeasure system, I’m going to have to give this one a big fat DON’T BUY on principle. I won’t restate all my reasons for supporting the modding, hacking, jailbreaking, and so on of your legally-owned… → Read More
Far be it from me to criticize the French. But yesterday France launched France.fr with a middling amount of press attention. But the site went down almost immediately after launching. This morning we gave it a pass, but tonight it’s still down. And we’re not sure anyone is working very hard to get it back up – it is just an information website, after all.
From The Connexion on the launch: → Read More
Cloud Platform startup Morphlabs has raised $5.5 million in Series B funding led by Global Gateway Investment Group with Frontera Group, CSK Venture Capital, and AO Capital Partners participating. This brings the company’s total funding to $7 million. → Read More
Well-designed kitchen stuff hits me right here, guys. I don’t know why. An elegant pan or pastry scraper is more exciting to me than a Droid X or new Sony camcorder. And here’s something I thought I’d never see: an electric kettle I desperately want. → Read More
The question that is on many people’s minds as the iPhone 4 antenna drama plays itself out is “why didn’t any of the reviewers notice this?” After all, we had reviews of the iPhone from the heavy hitters quite a bit ahead of time — seasoned tech journalists who were ostensibly on the lookout for issues like this. Yet I don’t recall reading a single word about sudden signal drops, proximity… → Read More
Chatroulette, the Internet phenomenon that allows users to jump into video chats with random, anonymous strangers (and all too frequently, their genitalia), has launched some new features that give users a bit more control over the kinds of fellow Chatrouletters they’re paired up with.
As first noticed by NewTeeVee, Chatroulette has launched a feature called Localroulette that will use your IP… → Read More
The second quarter PC shipment data from IDC has hit, and it makes for interesting reading. First of all, sales are up all over the place; no one appears to be losing volume, though market share is shifting. The biggest upset has to be Asus, whose astonishing 83.6% growth over last year’s quarter puts it within a nose of overtaking Toshiba as the fifth-largest shipper of PCs in the world.
What… → Read More
Mobile social network Flirtomatic (“the world’s number one flirting company”) today announced that it has raised $9 million in Series C funding from Nauta Capital and existing investors Doughty Hanson, Seraphim Capital and Chairman Avi Azulai. This brings the total capital raised to $17 million.
The London-based company says it will use the new investment to “further its growth across Europe and… → Read More
HomeAway, the massive vacation home rental service rollup, is ramping towards an IPO, likely in 2011, say sources close to the company. And that shouldn’t be any surprise, given the two key executive hires the company announced today – new chief product officer Tom Hale (previously CPO at Linden Labs) and chief operating officer Brent Bellm (previously PayPal, and in need of a vowel for his last… → Read More
The D90, Nikon’s popular and versatile enthusiast DSLR, may be approaching the end of its lifespan. It was leaked in August of 2008 and has been a solid contender ever since, despite having some serious skew on its video. And now, almost two years later, it appears to be being pulled from retail shelves in order to make room for a successor. It is whispered that this successor will be… → Read More
Toronto-based invoice startup FreshBooks has crossed $1 billion in billings that wer paid worldwide over the FreshBooks ecosystem between January and May of this year. FreshBooks lets you create and share invoices, time sheets and estimates within a web application. The application is largely popular amongst freelancers, consultants and small businesses. With both free and paid plans, Freshbooks… → Read More
Chevrolet apparently has started advertising the Chevy Volt but you won’t see anything about batteries, expected range, the price or any of the Volt’s novel traits — only silence. Click through for the ad spot. → Read More
Word is breaking that Apple is calling a special press conference on this coming Friday to talk about the iPhone 4. Yes, you can probably guess what this is about.
Apple blog The Loop has the (basically non-existent) details right now — that it will be in California on Friday morning and about iPhone 4. A small group of press are reportedly getting the invites right now. Update: We just got the… → Read More
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