Daily deals site Groupon has chosen TCDisrupt to launch Grouspawn, their latest publicity stunt and exercise in strange company culture. Groupon CEO Andrew Mason has decided that as the company expands, there will inevitably be babies born off the “intercourse” people are having on dates where they use Groupons. → Read More
EngageSciences, exhibiting in the Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt this week, has revealed it’s closed an angel investment of $750,000 from private European investors. Terms were not disclosed but we understand the round came from some UK and European angels.
The startup has been developing its application since December, focusing the concept of “social nurturing” – a fancy way of saying its about getting more fans for brand brands and companies. The startup is slightly different form the the current crop of U.S. social media marketing vendors, in that too many of these companies just focus on just getting more “Likes” for brands or increasing their fan count or simply running a one-off contest. This is rather tactical and avoids the issue of user retention in the longer term. → Read More
Fresh out of AT&T’s mouth comes word that they’ll be taking two exclusive handsets off of RIM’s hands: the BlackBerry Curve 3G (left, above) and BlackBerry Pearl 3G. → Read More
Watchismo has a great Fall sale going on featuring some of its more interesting German watches. I’m not a huge Tauchmeister fan – they’re kind of an eBay brand – but there are few cool pieces here and if you’re into the steampunk look, they might be for you. → Read More
LinkedIn’s CEO Jeff Weiner has just unveiled LinkedIn Signal at TechCrunch Disrupt, a new feature that neatly marries the worlds of LinkedIn and Twitter and allows users to apply the professional social network’s filters to Twitter’s firehose. Think of it as a window into Twitter (and LinkedIn’s updates), through the eyes of LinkedIn.
Intrigued? We have exclusive access for 250 TechCrunch readers. → Read More
Vevo CEO Rio Caraeff took the stage today at TechCrunch Disrupt to talk about how Vevo, like a Hulu for music launched in December 2009, is now the third largest source for video on the web. Vevo, whose core philosophy is that the Internet is about choice, now receives 49 million unique video viewers a month, with 500 million views in the US and 1.4 billion around the world. → Read More
I love me some Dell Streak. It is, in short, one of the best slates I’ve seen since the iPad (I haven’t seen the SamGalTab yet, but Greg liked it). Well, Dell is at it again with another 7-incher in the next few weeks and a 10-inch model in the next few months. → Read More
It’s the third and final day of Disrupt, but hold your tears. There’s already been so much good stuff that we’ve had trouble fitting it into the time we have, and today promises to be just as eventful. We’ve got special guests, new products being launched, and of course today is the the day we choose a winner in the Startup Battlefield. And you can watch it all live on TCTV.
To follow along or contribute to our coverage, use the #tcdisrupt tag on Twitter and when you post your pictures on Flickr, Twitpic, and so on. Of course, we have our own Flickr stream, constantly being added to, from which I’ll be posting a few highlights later in the day. → Read More
Back in June we previewed a new product by social media search engine Kosmix called TweetBeat. Essentially, it’s a way to follow news being discussed on Twitter in realtime. Today during our TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Kosmix is officially releasing the product.
Kosmix calls TweetBeat “the end of hashtags”. Because they scan all tweets being sent out for all kinds of semantic data, you no longer have to explicitly tag things with hashtag, is their stance. For example, over the past few days there have been almost 64,000 tweets about Disrupt from over 11,000 people — but only a small percentage have used the “#tcdisrupt” tag. TweetBeat found the tweets anyway. → Read More
Google TV is going to be big. Well, at least that’s what us Internet know-it-alls think. The average consumer will actually dictate its reach and household penetration, but apparently Logitech is siding with us on this one. According to a report published by DigiTimes, the company is expecting to ship 500k of their Revue boxes in this year alone. That’s commitment. → Read More
Threaded emails in Gmail is a controversial subject. Some say that the automation of drawing emails together within Gmail saves them the time of figuring out which emails are connected. Others find the feature complicated. What it comes down to is either you love the way Gmail clusters conversations together, or you hate it. Today, Gmail is giving people the option to turn on threaded conversations or mute the feature completely.
Within setting, you’ll be able to toggle off conversation view to see email as individual messages in chronological order. Some actions commonly associated with unthreaded email can be accomplished with searches in Gmail. → Read More
The all-in-one form factor isn’t going anywhere and Gateway is just reaffirmed their commitment with two new models. Even though these things hit for less than a grand, they’re still capabile machines and might fit your requirements. Both the 21.5- and 23-inch models rock Full HD touchscreens, 4GB of Ram, at least a 500GB hard drive, and Blu-ray drives. The larger, 23-inch ZX6951 model rocks a Core i3 and TV tuner though. Not too bad for a $999 MSRP. Look for them as soon as today at the usual electronic retailers. → Read More
Japan-based electronics company Murata caused a splash two years ago with Little Seiko, a a small humanoid robot [JP] that can unicycle forward and backward and is also able to stop without falling over. A male version, Little Seisaku [ENG], with similar skills exists, too. And now, Murata has announced [JP] 2010 updates for the robots. → Read More
For anyone that has ever struggled to string together a music playlist – whether it be for listening to at the gym, a party, at work or just casually – you may want to listen up. Playlistnow.fm, a brand new startup coming out of Paris, recently launched a microblogging platform that allows users to discover new music by sharing playlists.
When we covered the startup in TechCrunch France, it was nothing shy of a hit with our readers. Perhaps that’s because the platform also managed to do what Apple’s Ping does not do so well: integrate social. → Read More
What will amaze you about the watch is the straight forward, simple presentation of the information and the complication. While not an easy watch to make, F.P. Journe makes it seem easy by having it all work so well, and smoothly. The watch features the time in a digital display, with jumping hours and jumping minutes. Mechanical digital watches are proving to be quite popular, and the mechanism is usually governed by a constant force escapement that makes sure the power from the mainspring barrel is used properly. The movement itself is the in-house made and designed F.P. Journe Calibre 1509, and is really gorgeous. → Read More
We’re now part of AOL, and Mike has already written at length about what that means for us and you, our readers. And to showcase just how amazing our readers are: one of them actually took the time to produce a song about the deal.
We’re baffled, honored and a little weirded out – kudos to Christoph Grimm from German startup popula, who wrote the song as a sort of thank-you note for writing them up back in April 2008 (which got them funded, eventually). → Read More
Netsertive, a North Carolina-based online marketing technology company, today announced it has raised $4 million in Series A financing. New York-based venture capital firms RRE Ventures and Greycroft Partners co-invested in the startup.
Netsertive essentially aims to help small and medium sized businesses – as well as their related product manufacturers – reach customers in their respective local markets throughout North America with a strongly data-driven approach to online search & display advertising. → Read More
PayPal has offered buyer protection on its parent company eBay‘s properties since October 2003. Last year, the electronic payments juggernaut began offering purchase protection on merchant sites for select purchases, if the buyer didn’t receive the item.
Beginning November 1, shoppers around the world will have expanded buyer protection when they make purchases at the millions of retailers that accept PayPal, just in time for the busy holiday season. → Read More
Borders just announced the release of the wireless version of the Kobo ereader. The Kobo Wireless joins the nook and the non-wireless Kobo reader, but has improved hardware and software, and is priced at a quite reasonable $139.99. → Read More
Geomium, a new location-based social network, gets its official launch today, in London first but with other UK cites and then Europe and the U.S. to follow.
As with other such services, it lets users connect with friends, but it also emphasizes meeting new people and throws in venue data such as bars, restaurants, etc., as well as local deals and events — all with a focus on real time. If anything the service is in danger of overwhelming the user while also coming across as another me-too offering: How is Geomium different to the likes of Facebook Places, Foursquare, Rummble, Yelp etc.? But actually, that’s why it might just work. → Read More
