HoverMe, a new browser add-on, is launching to add contextual social information about who you follow on the new version of Twitter. After you install the add-on, which works with Firefox, Chrome, and IE, when you hold your mouse or cursor over someone’s name on Twitter.com, it brings up a window that shows links to that person’s profiles on other social networks and media sites.
For example, If I hover over my colleague Alexia Tsotsis’ name in my Twitter stream, I’ll be able togo straight to her Facebook, Foursquare, PlanCast, and FriendFeed accounts via the hovercard. HoverMe pulls in all this information via an API from Qwerly which pulls any profiles that can be found publicly in a Google or Bing search, including LinkedIn, Flickr and more. → Read More
Groupalia, a Spanish group buying site, has announced $3 million in revenues for December alone with the numbers of users now standing at 4 million across the six countries where it operates (Spain, Italy, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Chile).
Previously its stated goals for 2010 was to attract 2 million users and reach turnover of 5 million euros. But overall it’s closed 2010 with a turnover of $8 million. It started operating just 8 months ago.
It recently raised a funding round last October. → Read More
Madvertise, the Berlin-based mobile ad network, has added location-based targeting to its array of options – a first in Germany, claims the company.
Advertisers can now reach customers based on their exact GPS location, city, region or state. This is in addition to existing targeting such as channels, carriers, operating systems and devices, which, says madvertise, allows for relatively accurate targeting in respect to age, sex and income level.
Its location-based mobile ads rely on apps that are already polling GPS as part of their functionality. However, where GPS data isn’t captured, madvertise’s system falls back on other “localization algorithms” to determine a user’s position, which we presume is a mix of IP address and/or cell positioning.
Madvertise has also announced that it’s rolling out its next generation of mobile ads, which include support for rich media. A few other updates: → Read More
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about Travis Kiefer, a kid who worked brutally hard to get into Stanford, took time off to build a non-profit called Gumball Capital, and decided to raise money by running a marathon on every continent. It was one of the more passed around posts I’ve ever written with more than 1,200 Facebook “likes,” 800 retweets and RTing this actually made my username a national trending topic on Twitter for a brief period.
More important, TechCrunch readers donated more than $10,000 to Kiefer’s nonprofit. The deal was Kiefer would do something crazy for each $27 donation. Since he was going to be in Antarctica for a week, he figured he’d have plenty of time. And then he got stuck in Chile for three days. Oops.
I caught up with Kiefer from my parents house in Memphis and his parents house in South Dakota to hear how it all went. If for no other reason, watch this to see how much he looks like Kenneth from 30 Rock. → Read More
The new Net Neutrality rules put off most of the hard questions—but who does that help and hurt?
When government faces a tough decision, it has three options: “Aye,” “Nay,” or “Kay”—“Kick the Can.” Postponement is attractive, and the Obama administration’s 2010 Net Neutrality rule has transformed can-kicking, the traditional domain of small children, into an art form. In its rule the FCC has successfully put off almost all of the hard Net Neutrality questions that have been buzzing around since 2000 or so. It is a remarkable feat to write a rule that actually creates more uncertainty than no rule, but by golly, the agency has done it.
If you’re the type that prizes certainty and clarity (i.e., most engineers, business people and investors), then manufacturing confusion may sound like insanity. But welcome to law school: good lawyers know that uncertainty has a power all of its own. So to really understand the Net Neutrality rule is not to bother understanding the rule itself, but rather the effects the uncertainty will create over the next 5 years or so.
In simple win/lose terms, the effects are good news for the wireless (Verizon / AT&T) and Internet app (Google / Skype) companies, and, as we’ll see, something of a defeat for the cable industry. For users, the consequences are mixed. What you’ll probably notice most clearly is a sense of a growing gap between the wireline and wireless internet. The reason is that the whatever the wireless rules do (which is, of course, uncertain), they’ll have only a marginal effect on the practices in that industry. → Read More
OK, this is great. It’s a “real life” version of Call of Duty, complete with a guy running around in an old Andriy Shevchenko shirt. Oh, how I laughed! → Read More
After you’ve made a series of iOS App Store hits like I Am T-Pain, Glee Karaoke, Leaf Trombone, and Magic Fiddle, what do you do next to further bolster that yearly revenue? You could make another iPhone app, sure — or you could follow in the footsteps of countless mimes, jugglers, dudes-painted-to-look-like-robots and breakdancers before you, and turn to the streets. So that’s what Smule did. Lookin’ to bring in some extra cash for their Q4 reports (read: looking to have some fun and spread some Holiday cheer), they set out on tour, iPads Magic Fiddles in hand. Two stops later, they were rolling deep in over one dollar and fourty five cents (none of which, as our friends at Smule point out, do they have to share with Apple.) Take that, Bushman! Happy Holidays, folks. → Read More
Oh, dear. Microsoft has revealed a new security flaw in Internet Explorer that, if taken advantage of, could let evildoers take over your computer. That’s nice. The good news is that Microsoft hasn’t heard of any consumer attacks brought about as a result of the glitch, so there’s no reason to freak out just yet. → Read More
Tremor Media, a New York-based online video monetization and advertising company, recently acquired streaming ad placement service provider ScanScout for an undisclosed sum. Now, thanks to this SEC filing, we know they spent at least $65 million on the merger.
If the transaction was all stock, that’s the purchase price. If the agreement also included partial payment in cash, that means the purchase price was actually higher that that. → Read More
Although the press release is gloriously ridiculous, the watch is pretty cool. RJ, maker of the Titanic watch, styled this piece on the Steampunk Meme of 2010. The watch is “steampunk” because it has little pistons, gears, and odd numerals on an otherwise bog-standard timepiece. No price, but production is limited to 2,012 pieces. → Read More
Around twenty miles south of San Francisco is a small city called San Carlos. Despite living in the Bay Area for two decades I know almost nothing about it (Wikipedia says it’s an affluent small residential suburb) but starting today, it’s special for at least one big reason: it’s home to the largest Nexus S in existence.
Last night, Google employees installed a giant Nexus S in the San Carlos Best Buy, sporting a 42 inch touchscreen, a working camera, and internet connectivity. Yes, unlike the giant Nexus Ones that Google produced last year, which just played a looping video of the UI, this giant Nexus S actually works. And it’s actually being powered by a real (smaller) Nexus S that’s been equipped with special video-out capabilities. → Read More
I present to you, friends, unadulterated, the horrors witnessed by French journalist Jordan Pouille and recorded in his video, “Inside the Foxconn Prison,” are truly manifold. In what will soon be the The Jungle of its day, Pouille’s video of Chinese factory workers living their oppressed lives while shopping for food, listening to pop music, and meeting for lunch reminds us that jobs suck everywhere and that factory jobs suck the most. → Read More
Smith Electric Vehicles U.S. (SEV) and the Tanfield Group announced today that the American maker of all-electric trucks will purchase its United Kingdom-based parent company, Smith Electric Vehicles U.K. for $15 million in January.
The company began its U.S. operations in Kansas City, Mo. in 2009. Led by chief executive Bryan Hansel, SEV is buying all of the assets and operating business of Smith Electric Vehicles U.K. and renaming its business there Smith Electric Vehicles Europe to reflect an imminent expansion.
The company is eyeing Germany and France, countries whose governments have embraced renewable energy and electric vehicles… → Read More
Japan loves robots, and Japan loves sumo. So what would be more obvious than robot sumo? The so-called FSI Japan Robot-Sumo Tournament recently took place in the Ryogoku hall in Tokyo (where the real sumo wrestlers have their tournaments, too, by the way) – and we have two videos from the finals. → Read More
Skype is still recovering from its massive outage yesterday, but it is getting back to normal. Instant messages still seem to have a delay (anecdotally, I am noticing that I hear the IM ping, but then it is hit or miss whether any message comes through), but voice calls are working fine. I know because I just spoke with CEO Tony Bates over Skype. He estimates that between 16 million and 17 million Skype users, or about 80 percent of the people who would be on the service right now, can use it. “We are bringing folks back on in a controlled manner,” he says.
Bates priority is to get the service back up and running and to make sure Skype does not lose the trust of its users. To rectify that, he is publicly apologizing to them for the downtime and will offer users some sort of credits, with more details on that coming out later today. (Yes, free calls!) This is the right approach, and reminds me of what Netflix does when its streaming movie service goes down (free movies). → Read More
The iPad 2 is slowly being fleshed out and the latest rumor, while it should be filed alongside the claim Elvis made a cameo in Home Alone, is actually believable. This comes from an unnamed Chinese source by way of the Japanese site Macotakara who states the iPad 2 will get a large speaker on the backpanel like the mock-up shows above. But also the second generation iPad will sport the same size screen as the current, but the bezel will be 3mm smaller. → Read More
A Greek website, DigitalLife, has posted a long hands-on with the Alcatel E66, an Android tablet running at 800×460 resolution with a seven-inch screen. Nothing absolutely amazing, but I do love the woman’s voice demoing it. It sounds like a cross between a British Airlines flight safety warning and a mysterious archeologist heroine in a Dan Brown book. → Read More
Japan’s biggest business daily, The Nikkei, is reporting that Sony plans to double its production volume for image sensors used in smartphones and digital cameras. Big S is currently thinking about buying back a semiconductor plant it sold to Toshiba in 2008. → Read More
Grab ringside seats to the death of optical media with one of three new Blu-ray players complete with 1 year of free Redbox rentals. The folks at Redbox, who are running some other kind of concurrent Blu-Ray promotion, want their business model to remain vaguely viable for at least the next few years so they want to ensure that you and yours are enjoying fine Blu-ray entertainment as streaming moves in to eat their lunch. To that end, we must insist that you read on to find out how to win. → Read More
