Today, at TechCrunch Disrupt, Erick Schonfeld sat down with Bill Gurley, partner at Benchmark Capital and and Michael Grimes, Managing Director and Co-Head of Global Technology Investment Banking at Morgan Stanley, to discuss the current IPO market. As Facebook, LinkedIn, Jive and Millennial Media consider taking their companies public over the next few years, GreenDot, an under the radar startup is filing for a $2 billion IPO today.
When asked what will be the one IPO that will change the current market, Gurley said that he didn’t believe that their would be one single public offering that would shake the market and influence other companies. → Read More
Video advertising startup Brainient has secured $800,000 in financing, led by venture investor Arts Alliance, best known for backing DVD/Video on demand startup LoveFilm, Opera Software and Lastminute. More interestingly the round includes Silicon Valley maven investor Dave McClure as well as Alex Hoye, Algy Williams and Cambridge set alumni Sherry Coutu.
Brainient’s enhanced video advertising lets publishers and agencies place ads inside videos using a drag and drop interface
Video advertising is expected to hit $3.3 billion globally by 2012, but with competition, video pre-roll ad rates have fallen since the first half of 2010 versus 2009.
According to eMarketer, 36% of online video viewers click away on pre-roll ads. So Briainient’s technology concentrates on creating actionable banner ads in the video, such as booking a test-drive while watching a video advert for a new car. → Read More
Apple TVs are shipping and there isn’t much of a delay if any. That’s good. There will no doubt be dozens of Apple TV hands-on reports and so-called reviews popping-up within the coming days as Fedex men everywhere deliver the streaming box. But Clayton Morris can officially call “First!” on this one, though. He just posted what he calls a review, but while I totally have a bro-crush on the man, I think calling his article a review is a bit generous. Maybe “First Look” or “Hands-On” would be a better label. But no matter, click through to read a bit about his mom and the new Apple TV. → Read More
My mom has some hearing damage in one ear. She doesn’t wear a hearing aid but she does go “Wha?” whenever you ask her something and then you have to scream what you just said, embarrassing everyone at the AA meeting. When Powertel, a subsidiary of a German company, Amplicom that has made devices for the impaired for years, offered to send over a Powertel 500 DECT cordless phone I thought it would be nice for her to try.
It was. → Read More
4G, like all wireless technologies before it, is more or less a big magical mystery to most consumers. All they know — and all they care to know, really — is that 3G was fast, and 4G is faster. For that little niche who does care to know more, however, Sprint’s taken it upon themselves to mount up on a rooftop, camera in hand, and show you all the workings. To make the whole thing considerably more fun, I highly recommend turning on Youtube’s automatic captioning for gems like “there’s usually in tennis you need” and “We have some cell sites are pointing down missile sites all over the place”. Video is after the jump. → Read More
I’m very pleased to announce that we have acquired TechCrunch. Details are in the press release below, and I’m sure founder Michael Arrington will have a few words to say as well. This is a great compliment to our continued investment in world class content.
Press Release: → Read More
From the very beginning, Microsoft have insisted on keeping complete control over both the form factors and internal specs of any phone that wishes to run their upcoming OS, Windows Phone 7.
So far, however, Microsoft have only given details about one of the promised two “chassis” of their phones: the slate-style phones that you’ve seen around. It should be noted that “Chassis 1″ are allowed to have slide-out QWERTY keyboards, but no known WinPho 7 handset currently has one.
So, what is “Chassis 2″, then? → Read More
Slowly, but surely USB 3.0 is finding its way into more portable devices with the Toshiba Canvio being one of the latest. The just-announced Canvio 3.0 line brings USB 3.0 for no additional cost, while still offering the standard pre-loaded backup software and 256-bit data encryption. Available at the standard retail outlets, the line features a 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB drive, that carry the manufactured suggested retail prices of $119, $129, and $179, respectively. Oh, and of course there is a multitude of different trendy designs available. Because nothing says hip like random geometric shapes. → Read More
Welcome back, startup fans. It’s time for another day packed full of tech illuminati, breaking news, and genuinely amazing companies making their debuts. Our agenda for today includes a great number of investors, entrepreneurs, mayors of major cities, and someone who calls himself Chamillionaire.
As always, we’ll be streaming live all day long, as well as taping behind-the-scenes footage and interviews. And as always, employ the #tcdisrupt hashtag for Twitter, Flickr, blog posts, and all the other usual methods of propagating information. → Read More
Given that Apple’s Remote app is built by… you know, Apple, you might have assumed that it would’ve been one of the first out of the gate with support for the iPhone 4′s Retina display, the iPad, and other such Apple-made treats. You know what they say about assumptions, right? As it turns out, the Remote app’s team is pretty small — in fact, last we heard, it was a one-man side project. Such things don’t take priority, you know? Fortunately, it looks like he managed to find some time: version 2.0 of the Remote app is here. → Read More
Amazon.com today introduced the beta version of “Kindle for the Web”, which enables people to read and share digital book samples in their browsers without the need to install or download anything.
The company says it aims to lure bloggers and website publishers who participate in the Amazon Associates Program to embed samples of Kindle books on their websites (here’s how). It seems like a win: these website owners will earn referral fees from Amazon when customers complete book purchases using the links on their websites. → Read More
According to a Tweet from All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka, this morning, Twitter COO Dick Costolo said that the company will be “setting aside” its EarlyBird program, which partnered with retailers and e-commerce companies to offer discounted deals to Twitter users. The announcement appears to have been made in New York at the IAB MIXX conference.
It’s, of course, unclear what “setting aside,” means but clearly Twitter is re-evaluating the promotion. The idea behind EarlyBird was fairly simple. Twitter partnered with advertisers to distribute offers via the @EarlyBird account, and they get to determine the terms of the offer, including availability, amount, and pricing. Deals are published via the @EarlyBird handle several times a week. → Read More
While we’ve been Disrupting all over the place, Twitter has been hitting the advertising beat full force, with COO Dick Costolo at the IAB Conference in New York about to launch “Promoted Accounts” which will insert the accounts of brands and other services next to normal users in Twitter’s “Who To Follow” feature, which recently replaced an old Twitter mainstay, the “Suggested Users” list. → Read More
I wanted to say that the UR-CC1 “King Cobra” was one of the weirder Urwerk watches out there, but that is sort of like saying a guy with 3 arms is that much stranger than a guy with 5 arms. Urwerk timepieces have always been very different in style and appearance, but also provocative. Last year the brand finished developing their UR-CC1 watch that tells time via two linear dials. Based on the dashboard of some older cars, the watch tries to provide luxury, where there was once only utility. → Read More
After filing (renewed) applications for the words “tweet” and “twitter” recently, Twitter has now requested that its trademark “bird in flight” drawing becomes a genuine trademark as far as the United States goes, at least.
As you can see on Trademarkia, the U.S. federal trademark registration was filed for by Twitter early last week. The description given is fairly basic: “the mark consists of an outline of a bird in flight”. It will no doubt be a tough one to obtain. → Read More
I am currently attending the Google Developer Day Tokyo [JP], a one day event Google Japan uses to promote its services and technologies to hundreds of local geeks. At the exhibition area, I stumbled upon “RIC Android”, a robot that not only looks like the cute mascot for Google’s OS but is also probably the first one out there that actually runs on Android software. → Read More
Masabi, which develops mobile ticketing technology for the transport sector, has secured $2 million from London-based m8 Capital, the majority-owned affiliate of AGC Equity Partners that targets mobile startups and technology.
In June, m8 invested $800k in the location-based startup Rummble.
Masabi says the new funding will be used to support “commercial deployments” of the company’s mobile ticketing systems with UK rail companies and for international expansion. → Read More
When I logged on to Brizzly this morning, a notification popped up announcing some brand new features for the web-based social networking client. As you can read on Brizzly maker Thing Labs‘ blog, there are also some design changes accompanying the new features.
Like rival Seesmic Web has done in the past, Brizzly has now added Foursquare support to the fray, which means you can now see your friends’ Foursquare check-ins from within Brizzly. There’s also a new camera control feature and Brizzly has also finally decided to give people the choice on how to retweet, erm, tweets. → Read More
TigerText, a company that develops a private SMS app, has raised $1.9 million in angel funding led by Herb Madan and co-founder of Akamai Randall Kaplan.
Launched in February of 2010, TigerText’s mobile apps allows users to send text messages or photos that can then be deleted off both the sender’s and receiver’s phone after a selected period of time. Once a sender selects the message lifespan (from 1 minute up to 30 days), expired messages are not only deleted from both phones, but are not stored on any server and they cannot be retrieved once expired. Users can also select a “Delete on Read” option, which will delete the text 60 seconds after the recipient opens the message → Read More
Awww… look how cute! That little bugger is the LiveView Screen, a tiny little screen that connects to SE’s Android phones and acts as a second screen for calls, music control, and other bits of information including Twitter feeds. This is highly evocative of SE’s earlier attempts at creating a cool Bluetooth watch that let you take calls from your wrist. Why they have such an H-O for miniature wearable tech is beyond me but more power to them. Press release and features after the jump. It will be available Q4 at an unnamed price. → Read More
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