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
It’s cold out and the flight cancelations all over Europe are getting many of us. It’s amazing how much nature can impact business. So IMASTE, Spanish startup with a “virtual exhibition” solution hopes to bank on making events actually accessible. Today they release imastebox 2.0 (demo), a public beta of a complete upgrade to their platform. The new version boasts a complete visual make-over and integrates new features. With the upgrade, IMASTE hopes to break out of Europea and compete directly with large, venture capital backed U.S. players, including Unisfair, Inexpo and 6connex. → Read More
One of the startups on stage and in the demo pit at Le Web was Tinypay.me. Billing itself as the easiest way to sell stuff, you just fill a form for an item you want to sell and start selling. The page generated can be shared across social platforms and embeded into web sites. No account is needed as all the management is done through your e-mail and payments are handled by PayPal.
Now, this reminds me of Shoply, except you don’t need to create a full shop.
I don’t think Tinypay.me is necessarily a world beater, but as an attempt to create a sort of Twitter for Ecommerce, it’s interesting. And who can resist a founder who’s job title is Commercial Hippie.
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
That is, if they like gifts that are free. Because the newly-on-iPad app from the folks at iFixit definitely is free, and isn’t even ad-supported. It’s leveraging their growing database of repair instructions for cameras, game consoles, mobile phones, and pretty much everything out there. → Read More
It’s almost Christmas, and if your family is anything like mine (I really don’t know how likely that is), there will be mile-high piles of wrapping paper and ribbon by noon on Saturday. We’ve tried to recycle paper and ribbons year-to-year, but there’s always more to be done to make sure your holiday cheer doesn’t take down more of the Amazon than it has to. → Read More
Even though it wasn’t supposed to be released until CES, Dell’s new tablet leaked today via some ad copy, and it turns out the tablet will be called the Streak 7. → Read More
Needed any more sign that Christmas is upon us? The annual Google and North American Aerospace Defense partnership to track Jolly Saint Nick is back in action starting tomorrow at 2:00 am.
Apparently NORAD has been tracking Santa since 1955, hilariously because a telephone misprint in a Sears catalogue misdirected Santa hotline callers to a NORAD higher ups phone line. Google got in on the Santa tracking game in 2004 and partnered up with NORAD in 2007, bringing Google services like Maps, Earth and YouTube into the mix. → Read More
Back in October we wrote about JewelMint, a new subscription jewelry site endorsed by Kate Bosworth and her stylist Cher Coulter. The site represents the first vertical for Santa Monica-based startup BeachMint, and it’s apparently doing well — less than three months after launching, BeachMint just landed a new $10 million round, which comes in addition to the $5 million it raised last summer. The round is being led by Trinity Ventures, with participation from Stanford University and existing investors New Enterprise Associates and Anthem Ventures.
That was fast. BeachMint was only founded in June by Diego Berdakin and MySpace cofounder Josh Berman, both of whom previously headed News Corp’s incubator Slingshot Labs. → Read More
Short version: An attractive and compact pair of headphones, not revolutionary by any means, but powerful and portable, and hey, they say “Marshall” on them. → Read More
Group messaging has been something that has been pretty hot for a while now. In fact, it’s gotten so hot that products from other hot spaces are starting to pivot towards it — see: Brightkite. But despite the hotness, I’ve yet to find one of these apps that really hooks me. But a new entry in the space, Beluga, may just be my elusive white whale.
As first covered yesterday by blogger Louis Gray, Beluga is a service with a good pedigree. The three people behind it, Lucy Zhang, Ben Davenport, and Jon Perlow, are all Xooglers (ex-Googlers). What they’ve built is a simple, elegant, and fast group messaging service.
The key may be that it works across several different platforms: iPhone, Android, mobile web, regular web, and text message. But whereas most group messaging apps seem to focus on the lowest common denominator, SMS, Beluga puts the focus on the native iPhone and Android apps. The rest are simply fallback options. And across all the platforms, they’ve able to keep the experience consistent. → Read More
Alena Popova, is a former TV journalist who got into Web 2.0 a while back and is now a specialist in “Government 2.0″. She is also a venture investor in a social shopping startup in Russia and startup adviser.
We chatted about the startup scene and Russia’s Skolovo project to create a Silicon Valley in Russia. She’s also working on generating greater awareness of e-government in Russia and helped establish the project Duma 2.0 in Moscow. At the recent TechCrunch Moscow event I talked to her about empowering ordinary citizens in Russia through Government 2.0 platforms – especially important in a developing economy like Russia’s where officialdom can often disappoint – and the startup scene in Russia.
Oh man, it’s going to be hard not to let my feminist side shine through writing about this topic, but I’ll try my best! Ladieshoesme is a brand new French dating site, launched officially on December 13th, where ladies pick a man as if he were a pair of shoes…literally.
Members essentially have to identify themselves as a pair of shoes on the platform. That means, when you create your profile, you also have to include a picture of your favorite pair of shoes. Don’t have one? Not to worry, the site has a selection you can choose from. Plus, you have to also include some information in your profile regarding shoes and feet – like “For me, shoes are…(fill in)” or “What I really hate to see on someone’s feet is…(fill in).” It’s kind of silly and kind of fun, but does this whole expressing yourself via shoes business really change that much? → Read More
Short Version: The Roland R-05 is a pocket recorder for professionals and semi-pros looking to record voice and/or music live. It’s a far sight better than any smartphone recorder and the feature set, including effects, speed changers, and rudimentary editing including song splitting, is strong for a small, compact, $299 recorder. → Read More
Video advertising service Pixelfish has just raised $2.1 million in Series B funding according to a SEC Form D filed today. Combined with a $1.4 million Series A round raised back in February this cash brings the company’s total funding to $3.5 million.
Founder John McIntyre won’t give us specific details on the investors in the round other than to say they include himself, co-founder John Zdanowski and executives from AT&T and Microsoft. Floodgate will also be investing and VC Mike Maples (listed on the Form D) will be joining the Pixelfish board. → Read More
