A couple of weeks ago, game developer and Zynga rival Playdom continued its shopping spree just after raising $33 million in funding, acquiring social gaming startup Hive7.
What Playdom spent to buy the True Ventures-backed company wasn’t disclosed, but thanks to an SEC filing we now know that it concerned a mixture of cash and stock.
The exact amount Playdom paid for Hive7 in cash remains… → Read More
This is quick: If you have a Apple Time Capsule (2008 model) with serial numbers within XX807XXXXXX to XX814XXXXXX, Apple will replace it. Apple will even reimburse you if did some DIY repairs on the buggy model. Great! Now how about doing the same thing for iPhone 4′s death grip problem. [Apple Support via TUAW] → Read More
Facebook has often been criticised in the UK for not having a child safety ‘panic button’ and while a few media outlets are reporting today that it has launched one, the reality is somewhat different. What Facebook is launching is a tailor-made marketing application and campaign for a government body which till now had no presence at all on the social network. That’s quite a different thing… → Read More
Good morning – depending on what timezone you’re in, of course. It’s Monday morning (already), but in case you hadn’t noticed, the past weekend wasn’t really much of a doozy on the technology business news front. Did you step away from your computer for the weekend, or did the clash between The Netherlands and Spain at the World Cup divert your attention away from the technology industry… → Read More
As you probably remember, Geohot – George Hotz to his parents – is the kid who unlocked the original iPhone and, over time, became one of the foremost experts on iPhone unlocking and jailbreaking. A few days ago he announced an iPhone 4 jailbreak but, in an addition to the post, he states he’s probably not going to release it and may quit the scene. Another good man dead and… → Read More
Late last week, mobile communication services provider fring released an updated iPhone app that enabled iPhone 4 owners to engage in unrestricted 2-way video calling over Wi-Fi or 3G internet with other iPhone, Android or Symbian devices. This garnered a lot of attention, mainly because Apple’s native FaceTime application works only over Wi-Fi and between iPhone users.
Hours after its release… → Read More
RIM today announced the beta availability of their upcoming remote backup, restore, and locate service, BlackBerry Protect. Best feature? It’s free. → Read More
Location-based social network Gowalla is teaming up with CNNMoney for Money magazine’s annual “Best Places To Live” list. The top towns on the list have their own Gowalla hot spots, which are linked to from each city profile. For instance, the top Gowalla hot spots in McKinney, Texas (No. 5) include the Landon Winery, Pub McKinney, and Coffee N Cream. If you are within 25 miles of the top 25… → Read More
During its annual Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft introduced (a limited production release of) the Windows Azure platform appliance, the company’s cloud services platform for deployment in customer and service provider datacenters.
The company is touting partnerships with some big-name early adopters of the appliance, namely Dell, eBay, HP and Fujitsu.
In his keynote address, Microsoft… → Read More
We previously lamented AT&T’s inability to grasp one of the greatest features of Android — being able to load any app you want on it — when they stripped their new HTC Aria of the ability.
So we were a little surprised to find out that a weekend update to HTC’s Sync software enabled just that. → Read More
Uh-oh. It seems that HTC have gotten a little carried away with creating lustable phones, with another of their flagship phones suffering from shortages.
Demand for Sprint’s larger-than-life EVO 4G has outstripped supply, with the phone now being listed as delayed without a shipping date.
The shortage is being blamed on Samsung’s inability to produce enough touch-screens — the same reason… → Read More
Backupify, a startup that provides online backup, archiving and export services for cloud-based social media and SaaS data, is rolling out its application for Google Apps. This will allow any Google Apps users to backup all data stored in their Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Contact and Sites accounts.
Designed for SMBs using Google Apps, Backupify uses AWS to provide daily backups of data. IT… → Read More
Is there anything more awe-inspiring than a top-o-the-line concept phone? I can’t think of anything.
Even rainbows ain’t got nothin’ on Andrew Kim’s HTC 1. It’s minimalist design is inspiring, and — as the mandatory wacky bit seen on concept phones — the in-built filth-zapping UV screen cleaner will make sure to put the “clean” in “clean lines”. → Read More
Spotify has been released for Linux. As of today, a Penguin-friendly version of the streaming music service is available as a preview, although we still don’t seem any closer to the much-rumored U.S. launch.
According to an official blog post, the Linux version was built by developers at the company “during hack days and late nights”, and shares most of the same features as the Windows and Mac OS… → Read More
Good morning – depending on what timezone you’re in, of course. It’s Monday morning (already), but in case you hadn’t noticed, the past weekend wasn’t really much of a doozy on the technology business news front. Did you step away from your computer for the weekend, or did the clash between The Netherlands and Spain at the World Cup divert your attention away from the technology industry… → Read More
Here are some stories from the past week on CrunchGear: Doodle doot do do doot! SMB sidewalk is SMB on the sidewalk Roi de France Henri IV, avec lightsaber Could I interest the gentleman in a bespoke toy car? Onkyo presents super-cute Miffy netbook Solar Impulse flight a great success, flies for 26 straight hours powered only by the Sun → Read More
This is a guest post by Richard Leyland, an entrepreneur and writer with a particular focus on the future of work. Richard is also the founder of WorkSnug, the location-based service for mobile workers.
Last year I founded a tech company in the augmented reality space. We’re doing pretty well. What began as me, an idea and a laptop is now a company with five people, plus a small army of… → Read More
Viola Private Equity, an Israeli buyout and growth capital technology fund, is injecting $17 million into Adsmarket, a global performance-based advertising network based in Tel Aviv.
An affiliate of Viola Group, an investment consortium with nearly $2 billion under management, the PE fund will hold 21% of Adsmarket’s shares, valuing the company at $80 million pre-money. → Read More
Details are sketchy (but there’s lots to learn if you read the comments), but here’s another college student DIY project. Yes, I know it’s a little old, but it’s Sunday, and this is one of those “in case you missed it” things. Anyway, a college student mounted a snowboard on wheels, added a motor, wireless remote via a PS2 controller, and made a project that… → Read More
We’ve been following MP3Tunes, an online music locker, since it launched in late 2005. It’s come a long way since then. Today the service has 500,000 users, and has released a variety of new products to help those users get access to their music from almost any Internet connected device.
The core of the service is a music locker. It finds music on your hard drive and then backs it up online over… → Read More
If you’ve got an iPad but haven’t yet jailbroken it, I don’t know what to tell you. What are you thinking?! There’s a world outside of Yonkers, my friend. Don’t let Apple limit your imagination. An SNES emulator is a good start — it should run well and of course there is a huge library of games to choose from. Once you’re done there, I’d suggest an… → Read More
When you first look at Google App Inventor for Android, it may not look like much. That is to say, it’s ugly. But as with many Google services, beneath a layer of homeliness, there appears to be much more under the surface. In this case, it could be a very big gateway drug for Android app development. Or is it a Doomsday device that will muck up native app development on the platform?
The… → Read More
3Crowd, a startup that provides management tools for cloud-based services, is announcing the public availability of its platform, CrowdDirector.
Founded by BitGravity co-founder Barrett Lyon, 3Crowd’s management tools give enterprises greater controls over content delivery and other cloud services, enabling them to use multiple services at once. → Read More
This is a totes magotes bummer: according to theories posited by the author of this piece, Terrance Aym, and backed up by data from geo-chemists like Northwestern University’s Gregory Ryskin, the BP oil spill could release massive amounts of methane gas and, as an end result, blow out the entire seabed, leading to “massive venting” and large fissures in the sea bottom. This, in… → Read More
Yesterday, I broke down Apple’s minute-long FaceTime commercial for iPhone 4, noting how it seemed almost as if Don Draper from the hit AMC show Mad Men had created it. Now Apple has four other 30-second spots for the iPhone 4 that it has just put into rotation on national television. And yes, they’re all about FaceTime too.
The four spots are titled, “Smile,” “Meet Her,” “Haircut,” and “Big… → Read More
We recently wrote about the launch of a Y Combinator and TechStars-like startup incubator in Chicago, Excelerate Labs. The program’s nine fledgling startups are set to graduate from the inaugural session of the incubator in a few weeks. Here’s a brief look at the startups that will be graduating from the incubator. → Read More
C$ cMoney, a mobile payments startup based in Houston, is having quite a week. On Friday, the company announced an impressive funding round of $100 million from private equity firm AGS Capital Group.
The latest announcement was picked up by a few news outlets, including the WSJ’s Venture Capital Dispatch which touted cMoney as “a start-up with a funky name [that] has an ambitious plan for… → Read More
Josh Harris lived through a version of the future—a future where TV is replaced by constant, live video chat/surveillance over the Internet—and it almost made him go insane. His experiments from a decade ago with filming people day and night in a New York City bunker, and then himself and his girlfriend in his own wired loft, were documented in the movie We Live In Public. Now, after many… → Read More
Tesla Motors Founder and CEO Elon Musk isn’t a man that backs down when facing the press. When the New York Times wrote an error-filled article, Musk lashed out at the author, saying “What is he doing picking on an electric car company? Why would he pick on the little guy who is trying to do good when you’ve got egregious waste of money in the tens of billions occurring in Detroit?” He added… → Read More
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