This morning Pinterest co-founders Ben Silberman, Paul Sciarra and Yashwanth Nelapati woke up to a barrage of tweets, “So @myspace has completely ripped off @pinterest. It really pisses me off when an old, tired hack tries to undermine hardworking inovators. [sic]“Myspace revealed its new redesign last night and Pinterest users quickly picked up on the similarities between the two site aesthetics, leading to an intense Twitter debate. → Read More
Once again, mad props to Ron & Fez for bringing the following story to my attention. It’s called Bear Scratch, and it pretty much makes the new MacBook Air look like a pile of garbage cans. Bonus: the guy in the video is Balloon Dad. Surely you remember that Balloon Boy nonsense? → Read More
Earlier today, Apple’s 10-K form was released for their 2010 fiscal year. The long document is full of tidbits about the state of Apple’s business. One thing of note is just how much Apple ramped up their advertising spending in 2010.
For 2010, the company’s advertising costs were $691 million. That’s up from $501 million last year. And it’s the first huge jump for Apple in recent years. In 2008, for example, they spent $486 million. And in 2007, they spent $467 million. In other words, in previous years, the ramp up in ad spending has been about $15 to $20 million. This past year? A $190 million jump. → Read More
How much do you love Star Wars? Enough to stick Yoda or Darth in your ears? I thought so. → Read More
Yahoo has hired Ross Levinsohn, the former President of Fox Interactive Media, as EVP America’s Region, we’ve confirmed. AllThingsD first broke the news that he was close to taking the job.
Levinsohn will replace Hillary Schneider. Yahoo announced Schneider’s departure last month.
Levinsohn will take control of Yahoo’s Americas business, including content, advertising and partnerships. Some 2,000 employees will report into his organization.
This is also the first high profile executive hire at Yahoo since bringing in Chief Product Officer Blake Irving earlier this year. → Read More
Want an alternative to the Amazon Kindle/Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader duopoly? Kobo is always a choice, and now there’s word that you can newspapers and magazines on there, “there” being the Kobo Wireless eReader device as well as the iOS Apps. → Read More
ProsiebenSat1 Media Group, one of Europe’s largest TV networks, has quietly launched a daily deal site with the cumbersome name prosiebenproducts.de. The application is a simple and straight forward clone of the now well-known and exhausted Groupon concept, where collective buying efforts lead to great deals on a daily basis.
Yet this approach seems somewhat desperate and, to be honest, late. The Groupon model has showed some serious flaws lately and aside from CityDeal’s exit, which Groupon financed through its latest funding round, the hype seems to have abated. → Read More
At the beginning of this year, I was very excited. You see, at Google’s launch event for the Nexus One, they made one thing clear: they were going directly after the dominating carrier lock-in model that had held everyone in the U.S. captive for years. Then Google chickened out. And things are now getting just as bad as they have ever been. Unless Apple has the cojones to do what Google wouldn’t, that is.
To be clear, the report today from GigaOM’s Stacey Higginbotham isn’t about the U.S. She notes that Apple is working alongside SIM-card manufacturer Gemalto to make a built-in hardware SIM card that could work with many carriers across Europe. Essentially, this would allow customers to jump from carrier to carrier as a better deal came along or as they were traveling without having to swap SIM cards. → Read More
CRM and cloud giant Salesforce.com is shelling out $170 million to fully acquire its Japanese subsidiary, Salesforce Japan, from VC firm SunBridge and other stockholders. The subsidiary was formed in 2000 as a joint venture between Salesforce and SunBridge. Until now, Salesforce has the majority control (with 73 percent) but is purchasing all outstanding shares from the VC firm and other stockholders. Salesforce says the joint venture agreement has subsequently been terminated with the acquisition.
It appears that the reasoning behind the move is financial. Salesforce says that Jaapan is the largest revenue contributor in Asia Pacific for Salesforce, and “acquiring full ownership in Salesforce Japan allows Salesforce.com to further benefit from the growth in the Japanese cloud computing market and integrate and align its financial and operational functions.” In the first half of 2010, Asia Pacific sales accounted for 14 percent of Salesforce.com’s revenue, which is an 11 percent increase from the same period in 2009. → Read More
Since the Yankees are not in the World Series this year, my allegiance shifts to the San Francisco Giants. And, yes, while I may be a fair-weather baseball friend, I am willing to go to bat for my new favorite team, at least through this series. What better way to show my support than to “beardify” my Facebook photo with the Brian Wilson Beardifier app? (You can become a fan of his beard on Facebook too).
Brian Wilson is the Giants relief pitcher with the 95 mph fastball and pitch-black beard. He intimidates his opponents, who have learned to “fear the beard.” → Read More
In typical hyperbolic Apple style, the company has just announced the launch of Apple.com.cn, the Chinese hardware as well as the Chinese version of the “legendary” App Store (yes, they actually used “legendary.”) The store includes all the standard goodies like engraving and Mac customization. → Read More
Americans exporting renewable energy resources to the Middle East? It’s not opposite day.
A Mountainview, Calif. company, SolFocus, announced a deal with a major construction company in Saudi Arabia— Advanced Vision Electro Mechanical Company (a.k.a. Vision) — that is building a new, commercial solar power plant in Bahra.
The plant will be the first in Saudi Arabia to use concentrator photovoltaic solar power systems, or CPVs according to a joint press release from SolFocus and Vision. In general, CPV systems consist of solar cells and optics that concentrate sunlight onto the cells increasing their power output… → Read More
Let’s face it: Call of Duty: Black Ops will sell more than a few copies. ¡Gran día! In fact, Amazon tells me that the incoming data indicates the game is being pre-ordered at such a pace that it has overtaken other big media items, including Halo: Reach and Red Dead Redemption. It’s even outpacing the DVD release of Michael Jackson: This Is It. Michael Jackson was a famous musician, I think → Read More
It’s not the first film to be shot on a mobile phone but Nokia’s latest marketing push for its new flagship N8 smartphone is a good opportunity to take stock of how far camera phone technology has come.
The short film entitled ‘The Commuter’, which stars Dev Patel, Charles Dance, Ed Westwick and Pamela Anderson – yes, the Baywatch star of yesteryear – was shot in 720p HD entirely on the Nokia N8 over four days in London, plus plenty of post-production I’m sure. → Read More
We’re hearing from two separate sources that Nasza Klasa, the largest Polish social networking platform, is on the block for €130 million.
Launched in November 2006, at its height the service had over 27 million registered users. But figures have been nose-diving this year as Facebook eats into its core social networking user base. It may be that heat from Facebook which is prompting the sale. We’ve reached out to Nasza Klasa for comment.
The American investment fund Tiger Global is the current owner of Nasza Klasa, however there is also a stake owned by Excolimp, based in Cyprus (frankly the ownership is byzantine). From January 2008, the Polish portal belonged to Forticom, an investment vehicle belonging to Digital Sky Technologies (DST), which acquired a 62% stake, but divested itself of the NK interest to focus on Russia. → Read More
Ooo, I didn’t know this was coming out. It’s the Grand Theft Auto: Complete Edition, and it includes GTA IV along with its two DLCs, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony. It’s only available for the Xbox 360 and PS3. Sorry, PC gamers. Look at that: it’s available on Steam. Maybe I had had checked first… → Read More
Many sellers on sites like eBay, Etsy, and Amazon have created profitable small businesses out of opening up online storefronts on these e-commerce platforms. But these storefronts aren’t conventionally considered small businesses by the financial community and it can be difficult for them to raise working capital from banks. Kabbage is entering the space as a way for online merchants and sellers on eBay and Amazon to get capital they otherwise wouldn’t qualify for at a bank.
Kabbage uses technology to analyze online merchants’ sales and credit history; customer traffic and reviews; and prices and inventory compared to competitors. Via PayPal’s Adaptive Payments API, Kabbage will make cash advances available to eBay and other online marketplace sellers fairly quickly (Kabbage says that many transactions take as little has ten minutes). → Read More
It’s hard to have metaphysical conversations in the technology game. Most of chat – even with techno-evangelists and social media utopians – is disappointingly mundane. But once-in-a-while, one comes across an exceptional individual who thinks so deeply about technology that he makes it seem profound, even other-worldly.
Officially, Jeff Jonas is the chief scientist of the IBM Entity Analytics group and an IBM Distinguished Engineer. Less officially, he is a Las Vegas based ironman triathlete who is paid by IBM to think deep thoughts about data. If intelligent machines could talk, perhaps they would speak like Jonas – elliptically, enigmatically, but with a depth and wisdom that is all too rare in our always-on world of continuous updates and partial attention spans. → Read More
We’ve gotten word this morning that online streaming video service Ustream has laid off 9 people from its 200 person staff. With social news site Digg having other notable layoffs this week, it’s crucial to remember that startups often shed staff when going through product and business goal realignments. This is also the case here according to Ustream VP of Communications Lynn Fox. → Read More
If you’re still rockin’ a phone on Sprint’s iDEN network, it’s time to start thinking about other ways to fill your push-to-talk needs. According to Sprint’s main man, Dan Hesse, Sprint’s iDEN network is on the way to ol’ Technology Museum in the Sky. And by that, I mean they’re going to take it to a farm, where it can run and play with all the other old cellular networks. And by that, I mean they’re going to kill it. → Read More
