Tis the night – or day, if you’re in the US – before Christmas – at least for those who live in the majority-Christian bits of the world – and all through the house – or in my case, hotel – not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse. The mouse, after all, is dead.
There are plety of things I love about spending Christmas in the UK – snow,repeats of old TV shows I haven’t seen since this time last year, Christmas crackers – but more than all of that, I love the fact that Christmas is one of the last parts of the year that remains mostly analogue. → Read More
Shopping? Fighting? Dancing? Hugging? Working? Tell us! Remember, you can still win all sorts of crazy stuff today. We’re closing all of our contests tonight. → Read More
Several years ago, before Gilt, One King’s Lane and Zulily, I argued that some of the most valuable, disruptive tech startups would be in commerce, not advertising, cutting out the middle man rather than adding another one. It’s fair to say that 2010′s fastest-growing technology companies have largely been examples of this trend.
Now there’s a second trend emerging in 2011 that seems at least as important: the hybrid business, with one foot in the virtual world and one foot in the real world. This isn’t the old “clicks-and-mortar” concept from the 1990s, which put web glitter on an old-school business, building Walmart.com for Walmart. A hybrid business is built entirely from scratch, to be innovative in its online technology and its real-world operations. → Read More
We’ve seen this one coming all year. Facebook is now the third largest website in the world, taking the No. 3 spot from Yahoo, according to comScore. Facebook drew an estimated 648 million unique visitors from across the globe in November, 2010, compared to 630 million for Yahoo. In October the two sites were dead even with 633 million worldwide unique visitors each (actually Facebook had already passed Yahoo by a smidgeon in October with about half a million more visitors). The only two Web properties left which are bigger than Facebook are Microsoft (869 million worldwide visitors) and Google (970 million) when you look at all of their sites collectively.
The evidence leading up to this overthrow has been building up for a long time. Facebook became the fourth largest Website in the world nearly 18 months ago, and quickly passed Yahoo in pageviews. Today, Facebook accounts for nearly a quarter of all display ads in the U.S., which is more than twice as much as Yahoo. → Read More
We have a Christmas surprise for all of you.
As you have seen us do in the past, we feel it’s only fair to give away some of the new, fancy, amazing items we so often write about, and this time we are giving away a Google Nexus S to one lucky reader.
You can read our full review on it here or watch Erick Schonfeld and John Biggs review it on Fly or Die (also embedded below). It is really simple to set up, includes all of Google’s various apps (like 3D Maps and Google Voice), and is incredibly fast.
Simply put, this is the best Android phone on the market right now. You want it? To enter is simple. Just fan the TechCrunch Facebook page and then do one of these two things: retweet this post (making sure to include the #TechCrunch hashtag), or leave a comment below telling us why you think this phone needs to be yours. → Read More
Reading and books: probably the most fantastic gifts possible. That said, the Nook Color can do books, magazines, simple games, and browse the web all on an Android system. It’s been called an iPad light and that’s a great description, really. Normally these run $249.99 in Barnes & Nobel stores, but as the last item in our 12 Days of Christmas giveaway extravaganza, it’s going to one of our lucky reader for nothing more than the cost of a comment. Of course B&N stores are still open today and the Nook Color along with its e-ink counterparts are likely still available if last minute shopping is on your to-do list. They are great devices. Also, consider this last call for our big ticket giveaway: one stunning gaming system from Digital Storm worth nearly $2,300. Both the computer and Nook Color giveaway end tonight at 11:59pm PST. Click through for the instructions and rules. → Read More
Toshiba seems to be determined to completely overhaul its semiconductor segment. Yesterday, it was reported that Sony will buy back a semiconductor plant it sold to Toshiba two years ago for $600 million. And today, Toshiba itself said it is ready for a second step: the company is in talks with Samsung to farm out the production of LSI chips to its Korean rival. → Read More
Reading and books: probably the most fantastic gifts possible. That said, the Nook Color can do books, magazines, simple games, and browse the web all on an Android system. It’s been called an iPad light and that’s a great description, really. Normally these run $249.99 in Barnes & Nobel stores, but as the last item in our 12 Days of Christmas giveaway extravaganza, it’s going to one of our lucky reader for nothing more than the cost of a comment. Of course B&N stores are still open today and the Nook Color along with its e-ink counterparts are likely still available if last minute shopping is on your to-do list. They are great devices.
Also, consider this last call for our big ticket giveaway: one stunning gaming system from Digital Storm worth nearly $2,300. Both the computer and Nook Color giveaway end tonight at 11:59pm PST. Click through for the instructions and rules. → Read More
E-commerce giant eBay sees a massive amount of searches every day—the company just announced that it handled more than 2 billion U.S. product searches in the third quarter alone. For the same time period, comScore reports that Amazon saw 847 million searches, while Google handled only 226 million product searches. Similar to the fact that top Google searches can show what’s trending during a specific time, eBay’s searches can show us what is popular in terms of e-commerce at a given time.
The company has releases data on the top product searches on the marketplace during the holiday shopping season (Dec. 1 through Dec. 22). During the time period, the top three products that saw the largest spike in searches (in order) are the Nintendo Wii Console, Xbox Kinect, and “Ugly Christmas Sweater.” → Read More
Keeping Christmas Green With A Couple Eco-Friendly Wrapping Tips iFixit’s iPad App: A Nice Last-Minute Gift For The Tinkerer In The Family Review: Marshall Major Headphones Review: Roland R-05 DIY: “Soft-touch” Your Cell Phone, Game Controller, Or Adult Toy → Read More
After selling his latest company, Jajah, to Telefonica for $207 million a year ago, co-founder Daniel Mattes has set his sights on the electronic payments market.
Mattes, who has apparently been baptized the “Bill Gates of the Alps”, has started a new company called Jumio. → Read More
Once a company focused on building a slideshow creation tool, FlipTrack in May 2008 decided to change its name to Moblyng and shift its core reason for being to bringing Flash objects to mobile phones.
Today, the company seems to have pivoted a third time, now developing cross-platform HTML5 games for mobiles devices.
And according to this SEC filing, the company is currently raising nearly $10.9 million, having already secured about $7.5 million for the round. → Read More
Zumbox, a privately held company that offers a digital mailbox and filing system based on your street address, has raised a little over $9.7 million in venture capital, according to this SEC filing.
In August 2009, Zumbox announced that it had raised $8 million from a number high-profile investors, including Michael Eisner, the former CEO of Walt Disney and Rick Braddock, the former CEO of Priceline.com. → Read More
Callidus Software, which markets Sales Performance Management (SPM) software solutions, has announced its intent to acquire all of the assets of its technology partner ForceLogix.
Through the acquisition, Callidus says it gains a solid sales coaching and talent development technology platform, and the ability to extend its footprint to provide the most comprehensive offering of on-demand sales talent lifecycle management solutions. → Read More
Yandex, the leading Russian search engine, has acquired WebVisor, a Russian startup, after holding an “open day for startups” to pitch the search company. WebVisor provides visitor behavior analysis (mouse movement, clicks, text copying etc.) and will be integrated with the company’s own visitor statistics tool, Yandex.Metrica. Terms were not disclosed.
Yandex says the WebVisor team has joined the company to work on merging their technology into its own framework. WebVisor will keep servicing existing clients, but the service will not accept new customers going forward. → Read More
As we reported yesterday, Facebook for a while blocked all j.mp short URLs provided by parent company bit.ly in status and page updates.
Asked for more information, Facebook said it was working with bit.ly to resolve the issue, and that more than 70% of j.mp links pointed to spam or “other security issues” at the time the block was imposed.
Thanks to our original tipster on the story, William Albano, we’ve now learned that j.mp links can now again be posted to Facebook walls worldwide. → Read More
Back in October, after the official launch of Windows Phone 7, I wrote up some initial thoughts after having played with a few prototype devices in the months leading up to the launch. Many seemed surprised by my mostly positive reactions. It seemed to me at the time that Microsoft may have actually brought a gun to a gun fight with Windows Phone — as opposed to a sword, or a knife, or a mop.
At the same time, I noted, “Now they just have to run a marathon. Up a mountain. Against competitors that they gave a 20 mile head-start to.” And the early indications point to that race not going so well for Microsoft early on. But still, I think there might be some hope for the platform, for two reasons. First, I’ve actually had the chance to use a finished device for a while now — and I like it. Second, Microsoft has a seemingly endless supply of money.
As I’ve done with a number of other smartphones, the following is my take on Windows Phone from the perspective of an iPhone lover. In my mind, the latest iPhone (currently, the iPhone 4) is still the device to beat out there in the smartphone market, and so I look at all these new devices from that perspective. Is Windows Phone good enough to make me consider switching? Is there anything about it that’s better? Worse? Etc. → Read More
Pummelvision does more than turn photos into video. Created by Vimeo co-founder Jake Lodwick, the service literally flashes your life before your eyes by pulling all your photos from Facebook, Flickr, or Tumblr and exporting them to either YouTube or Vimeo. You also have the option of pulling from a single set if you’re using Flickr.
Lodwick wants to eventually be able to grab photos from anywhere and have the videos export anywhere, and plans on adding support for Picasa, Twitpic, Twitvid and Dropbox. He also is working on customization features in order to be able to change features like speed and music, which was the first thing on my wishlist (you can see the fruits of my Pummelvision efforts here). → Read More
