Xerox’ Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) is spinning out PowerCloud Systems, the cloud-managed networking solutions provider that it has incubated through the Startup@PARC program since early 2008. PowerCloud has also gained more backing, with Walden Venture Capital and Javelin Venture Partners joining the line-up.
PowerCloud offers cloud-based technology for OEM vendors that is designed to make business networking devices easier to deploy, secure, and manage. The company builds on intellectual property developed at PARC, including two exclusive and eight shared patents in areas ranging from cloud-virtualized network controllers to “usable security.” → Read More
Exclusive - Totsy, a private sale site targeting moms of kids aged 0-7 (and moms-to-be), has raised $5 million in Series A funding from DFJ Gotham and Rho Ventures. The financing round follows the startup’s recent “acquisition” of competitor bTrendie’s member base.
Totsy is the umpteenth niche-specific (in this case, for everything from prenatal care products, baby gear, travel accessories to children’s clothing and toys) to emerge, following in the footsteps of flash sales sites like pioneer Vente-Privée.com, Gilt Groupe and Rue La La. → Read More
So… Any Good Black Friday Stories To Share? Nooka’s Zub Zayu, Another Tasteful Abstact Wristwatch Whoa: Nintendo Sells 1.5 Million Consoles During Black Friday Week Seven Gifts For The Blue Collar, Outdoorsy Dad Or Husband Gresso Luxor: The Phone You Bury Alongside Your Still-Living Servants In Your Stone Tomb → Read More
A new report from Juniper Research forecasts global mobile games revenues to surpass $11 billion by 2015, nearly double what they were in 2009.
All in all, it’s a fairly conservative prediction in my opinion, but what’s interesting is that the research firm also says in-game purchases will overtake the traditional pay-per-download model, with Apple’s in-app billing mechanism leading the way, as the primary source of monetizing mobile games in about two years (by 2013). → Read More
As expected, Virgin’s new iPad-only magazine Project has hit the App Store. Most had been anticipating it at some point later today, but it actually went live in the U.S. store right around midnight PT. We’ve just managed to snag a copy after a pretty lengthy download (these magazine makers really need to get these file sizes under control).
We’ll do a more thorough walk-through once we’ve actually sat down and read the thing. But at first glance, Project looks nice. The interactive movie cover reminds me a bit of the newspapers in the Harry Potter films. Of course, once I got past the cover, it took me a bit of time to figure out how to navigate through the damn thing. But I eventually got the hang of it. → Read More
Facebook co-founder and former Obama social media guru Chris Hughes has just launched Jumo, a social network for charities, in beta today. Jumo aims to help you discover what causes matter to you by allowing you to follow specific charities as well as keep tabs on what your friends are following. Seems simple enough.
On Jumo each cause/charity has its own relevant news stream, sort of like what would happen if the Facebook app, “Causes,” coincidentally started by Sean Parker and former Zuckerberg roommate Joe Green, had its own social network that allowed you to actually “friend” charities. → Read More
There seems to be a common cycle for many startups. First, you capture users. Then, you capture brands/celebrities. Then you capture revenues. Most startups never make it past step one, let alone steps two and three. The mobile photo sharing service Instagram rocketed past step one in about a week. And then kept going. Now it’s time to explore step two. Which is exactly what they’re doing with their first major brand partnership: National Geographic.
The partnership seems like an obvious one since Instagram is all about great-looking pictures, and National Geographic is known for great-looking pictures. “National Geographic makes a ton of sense as an initial partner – they’re a fantastic company with such a rich visual history. Given that they’re so visually oriented, it’s a no-brainer that we’re going to be trying some interesting stuff out with them over the next few months,” Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom tells us. → Read More
The Google-Groupon acquisition rumors are coming in hot and heavy now. The day began with a rumored price of $2.5 billion, which was way too low. Now it ends with a more likely price somewhere between $5 billion or $6 billion. Whatever the price, it will likely be Google’s largest acquisition ever if it goes through (beating out DoubleClick’s $3.1 billion, and certainly YouTube’s $1.65 billion price tags).
But why is Google even interested in Groupon? It is essentially an e-commerce site, bringing consumers daily deals from local and national merchants. Google doesn’t do e-commerce very well (although it is trying through sexier product search). Buying Groupon would be a very risky $5 billion bet for Google in an unproven area outside its sweet spot of search I won’t even get into valuation, which at $5 billion would be somewhere in the neighborhood of ten times whispered revenue run-rate of $500 million. But Groupon is the clear market leader in the fastest growing new category on the Internet, and Google seems willing to pay whatever it takes to buy market leadership. As one CEO in the local commerce industry put it to me on Monday, “I think the way Google will evolve is they will want to control everything significant on the Internet.” → Read More
While it seems as though every other post we’ve written lately can be taken as evidence that Silicon Valley is currently in a very optimistic phase, “Facebook Now Worth $50 Billion In Secondary Trading” pretty much took the cake, until this one.
Perhaps a better marker of the “good times” tipping point than the rumored Groupon acquisition (AND the subsequent Groupon for Groupon spoof), the highly contested Tech Bubble of 2010 now has its own Twitter address at @the_tech_bubble. → Read More
The Founder Institute, a very early stage startup accelerator and entrepreneur training program, was launched in 2009 by Adeo Ressi. The company now has programs in a variety of cities in the U.S. and around the world – ten cities at the last count.
That’s a lot of startups flowing through the program, and Ressi often gives advice to young companies even after the program is over. One thing he doesn’t like are people and companies that do things that add friction to the already difficult task of building a company (or otherwise piss him off). And he usually doesn’t waste a lot of time before jumping right in and slamming anyone he thinks is guilty of being an “unsavory character.”
Today, for example, he began publishing a blacklist of these companies, available only to people who’ve gone through the program. First on the list is a law firm, Gunderson Dettmer, that often represents venture capitalists and startups. Over-lawyering by the first apparently caused one venture deal to fall apart. → Read More
If you own either a Sprint Epic 4G or Evo 4G, and love to game (not necessarily as much as this guy) then you should listen up, as Gameloft are now offering a buy-one-get-one-free deal for Sprint customers.
Announced on their blog today, Gameloft are offering the deal throughout the holidays on all of their “HD” titles.
Follow me through the jump to see a list of titles, as well as instructions on how to get in on the deal. → Read More
A week ago, it was revealed that Apple executive Phil Schiller was using Twitter. Actually, he had been on the service for about two years, but he wasn’t active, nor was he verified, so no one was sure it was him. Well, now we know it is him and all of a sudden, for whatever reason, he has decided to become an active user.
And since stories like ours pushed Schiller from 800 or so followers to about 16,800, he has stepped up his game another notch: he’s actually started answering @replies with questions pointed towards him. Perhaps this shouldn’t be too surprising, since this is the same Schiller that took matters into his own hands in August 2009 when there was growing discontent among iPhone app developers. But he is still an executive at Apple, the notoriously secretive company. → Read More
In October, after the COICA bill was postponed (until now, essentially), I suggested that as long as the internet was bound by a DNS system centralized enough to be gripped at will by the United States government, it was in fact too centralized. An alternative to traditional DNS, currently presided over by ICANN, seems the only option if the current level of freedom of information on the internet is to be maintained.
I was (and am) speaking as a layman; I know virtually nothing about the technical details of DNS, and the dangers and difficulties accompanying a departure from that system are numerous. But the benefits would be considerable, and it’s beginning to look like it has to happen sooner or later. Now Peter Sunde, a man somewhat more acquainted with the way things work on the internet, seems to be of a similar opinion. → Read More
The Arlington, Va. clean tech startup, OPower, closed a $50 million series C investment led by Accel Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers (KPCB) and joined by the company’s earlier investors New Enterprise Associates (NEA) the firms announced Monday.
OPower’s software-as-a-service helps electric and gas utilities understand who their residential energy consumers are, and how they are using power. Home owners get access to OPower programs through their utilities. OPower’s applications let them see if they’re more or less energy-hogging than their neighbors, allow them to set personal goals to reduce their own energy consumption at home, and receive alerts if they’re headed for a large bill at the end of the month among other things that are meant to inspire a behavior change. → Read More
Although I’m partial to old-school watches, these newer, hard-to-read-yet-stylish devices are tempting. The new Zub Zayu from Nooka features an interesting asymmetric design that may or may not feel right on your wrist. → Read More
It was just a few weeks ago that Accel Partners sold off around half a billion dollars of Facebook shares at a company valuation of $35 billion. If you thought that was insane, and a lot of commenters did, then don’t read the rest of this post. You’ll only get more jealous.
Around $40 million changed hands last week in a Facebook share auction held by SecondMarket. The end price per share was $20.76, and about 1.9 million shares were bought and sold. And based on there being around 2.5 billion shares outstanding after a 5-1 stock split earlier this year, that values Facebook at around $50 billion. As far as we know, this is an all time high.
The email sent out to auction participants is below. A new auction is beginning shortly. We’ve reached out to SecondMarket for comment. → Read More
The MID, mostly lately personified by devices from Archos and OQO, is very close to being an extinct category of device. I don’t see that as sad, exactly — we’ve just moved on to better devices. But I do feel a pang of pity for the final generation of this once-loved form factor. The OCS1 looks like a slick little device — or would have a year or two ago, when devices like this were still considered practical. → Read More
In France, the excitement is already building up. LeWeb, the famous conference that pretty much transforms Paris into Silicon Valley, is only 1 week away.
For everyone who is coming from abroad to attend, I thought it’d be a great time to introduce you to Korben (photo), one of the well-known French tech bloggers, and his new real-time tech job board, RemixJobs.
Now for anyone who doesn’t know Korben (aka Manuel Dorne), he began blogging back in 2004. At the time he was writing mainly for forums and whatnot, until eventually he decided he’d had enough and went off to launch his one-man blogging show. He has single-handedly accumulated some 1.2 million monthly readers since. And while we’re at it, I may as well mention that he’s a die-hard Android fan, lives on open source and has also launched a site to defend privacy and the liberty of expression online.
But enough about Korben, let’s talk about his latest project: RemixJobs. → Read More
In an interview with Mobilized today, Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci mentioned that they are working to create a Windows Phone 7 powered handset.
Gianfranco also talked about why they originally turned to Android (over Windows Mobile 6.5), and why Windows Phone 7 has them interested again.
Jump on past the break for the quote, and an unrelated video. → Read More
