Blekko, the perky little search engine startup that lets you customize your search results, is taking the fight against web spam to a new level. It already allows searchers to mark results as spam and keeps a spam clock that counts how many spam pages are on the web (743 million and counting). Now it is about to block content farms like Demand Media’s eHow and Answerbag entirely. The top 20… → Read More
We all know LG hates bezels. Or loves thin bezels. One of those things. At any rate they are eliminating the thick bezels we all have on our TVs and monitors and replacing them with thinner ones.
I love the trend, personally, but it takes more than a thin bezel to make a decent display. What else have you got, LG? → Read More
This evening the New York Times published an article titled Apple Moves to Tighten Control of App Store. An alternative title, should the report prove accurate, could be, Apple Underscores The Downsides Of Its Closed Platform. Really, things look like they are going to get nasty.
According to the report, Apple blocked Sony’s e-reader application from the iPhone and mandated that it would need to… → Read More
The crowdsourced funding craze is picking up steam. Tonight we see the launch of 33needs, a site where socially-minded startups can raise initial seed funding from individual contributors on the Web. It is Kiva meets Kickstarter.
Social startups post their “needs” in terms of how much money they are looking to raise, what problems they are going to solve and how they are going to do it, along… → Read More
Short Version: Here we go again: another impressive 7-inch Android tablet with a Gorilla Glass screen, 4G networking, and a suave interface. But is this thing more of the same or something new? The tried-and-true 7-inch tablet is, by now, old hat. In fact, little about the Dell Streak 7 is new except the clear emphasis on media playback and T-Mobile’s 4G wireless. On the aggregate, I’d… → Read More
RentJuice, an online community that allows real estate agents and brokers to view rental data in real time is announcing its Series B round of $6.2 million in funding today, led by Highland Capital and esteemed Draper Fisher Jurvetson founder Tim Draper.
While not consumer facing, RentJuice is still useful to consumers as it can provide a broker with up to the minute data on whether a given… → Read More
Super Bowl is just around the corner, and that means it’s the one and only time people anticipate commercials more than the game. Motorola has released a teaser for their Super Bowl commercial and it criticizes Apple. Their message is that “2011 is [actually] a lot like 1984.” The 1984 reference dates back to Apple’s own Super Bowl… → Read More
When it comes to point-and-shoots, you generally don’t see too much variation in the lens covers. They usually either have an automatic one or a piece that slides out of the way in one direction. A patent filed by Sony, however, shows off a pretty radical design that might set their cameras apart from the rest. → Read More
StrikeAd, the mobile ad startup, has raised a Series A round from German VC firm eValue, which has also backed the European video ad network, smartclip. As is often the case with regards to European investment, the actual amount remains undisclosed. However, it’s said to enable StrikeAd to “accelerate the development and deployment of its technology platform as well as help drive the company’s… → Read More
By now you’ve probably heard of Google Voice, a service that lets you take one phone number and configure it to ring all of your phones — work, mobile, home, whatever — with plenty of settings to manage your inbound and outbound calls. But what if you wanted the opposite: a service that lets you spawn a multitude of phone numbers to be used and discarded at your leisure? That’s where Vumber… → Read More
Android has passed yet another milestone in its race to the top: With 32.9 million handsets sold globally this last quarter, it has ousted longtime champion Nokia (with 31m) for the title of most popular smartphone OS maker in the world. It’s a bit of an apples to oranges comparison, of course, since Nokia also makes its own handsets, but quibbling aside, the toppling of such an iconic… → Read More
Why not do something productive with the last few minutes of your workday and actually make something. Go to the supply closest and grab a large binder clip, some string, a durable rubber band and a bit of duct tape (black if it’s available). Got it? Good. First, look at this pic of the end result and try to build what you see. Of course you could always head over to Lifehacker for the… → Read More
The social enterprise wars are heating up. Last week, Jive’s Tony Zingale came on to talk about a user survey that showed quantifiable value his customers were getting from Jive’s software and answer why Yammer and Salesforce get the bulk of the industry press.
I invited Salesforce’s Marc Benioff and Yammer’s David Sacks on the show if they wanted to rebut anything said. Sacks took me up on it… → Read More
Mozy Founder Josh Coates launches Instructure today. He’s hoping to disrupt the entrenched player in the University LMS space, Blackboard, and take a big part of its $377 million or so in revenue.
In 2007 EMC acquired Mozy, an online backup solution, for $76 million. Coates stayed for another year, then left.
Since then he’s been helping Nepalese refugees integrate into American society, and… → Read More
Accel Partners is announcing today the addition of former eHarmony head CEO Greg Waldorf as CEO in residence. Waldof spent eleven years at eHarmony and five as CEO before leaving the company a couple of weeks ago and landing at Accel as of today.
While at eHarmony, Waldorf oversaw an online dating business that raked in more than $1 billion in revenue. Under his helm the company expanded into… → Read More
Apple has quietly made a change to its repair policy regarding the liquid contact indicators, or LCI. You may remember last years lawsuit surrounding the issue. Perhaps that had something to do with it. → Read More
I wasn’t convinced this particular project was worth its salt, but a little reflection convinced me. I don’t use Apple’s dainty little desk accessories — I always go back to a nice, meaty mechanical keyboard and high-performance mouse, because Apple’s keyboards are like toys and the trackpad is no good for gaming. But hey, some people like ‘em. The trouble is their naturally light and… → Read More
RIM has posted a long describing some business aspects of the RIM Playbook. It’s mostly for IT nerds so you don’t absolutely have to watch it if you don’t like hearing some dude talk about email sync in monotone, but at least it will give you a little time with everyone’s favorite upcoming tablet. → Read More
This is pretty cool. Sculpteo, the online 3D printing service, has launched a new product that lets users turn two photographs of a person into a real-life figure – a mini me or physical avatar if you will.
The Paris-based company is interesting in that it’s in-part positioning 3D printing, a relatively new method of producing a real-life object from a 3D file, as a consumer-facing proposition. → Read More
I had a premonition about this when the previous announcements of Galaxy Tab sales seemed unclear over whether the one million and two million figures were units sold to consumers, or units shipped to distributors. As it turns out, it’s the latter. So how many did they actually sell to people?
Samsung didn’t give any figures, but when a company describes sales of a flagship product as “quite… → Read More
You can tell a lot about a person from their mobile app library. Are they avid Doodle Jumpers, or do they prefer to challenge their wits with a few rounds of Civilization? Do they stretch their vocal chords to the beats of T-Pain or Glee’s background choir? You get the idea.
Given how much time people spend building out their app libraries, it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that they love to… → Read More
It was only last week that Google acquired SayNow, a voice messaging startup, They’re already putting them to good use. I mean really good use.
As they’ve just announced on the Google Blog, the search giant has teamed up with the incoming SayNow team and Twitter to create a simple speak-to-tweet service for people currently engulfed in the turmoil in Egypt. → Read More
It used to be that when you thought of BitTorrent-related lawsuits you’d think of the RIAA, or maybe the MPAA. It may be time to update that line of thinking. TorrentFreak notes that we’re now approaching 100,000 copyright infringement lawsuits filed here in the US of A in the past 12 months alone. The thing is, it turns out that pornography studios are now where the RIAA was several years… → Read More
We’re hearing reports on Twitter that the coverage of Noor Group’s DSL service, Egypt’s last standing ISP which powers the Egyptian Stock Exchange as well as sites of major brands like Coca-Cola and Exxon Mobile, is being shut down, meaning there is a risk of Egypt losing all Internet coverage.
According to Jacob Applebaum the shut down is occurring in stages and certain sites are still… → Read More
Valentine’s Day is two Mondays away. This means you have about two weeks of procrastination and/or shopping until Sunday, the 13th hits and you’re forced to buy something lame from Sears. Solution: Win this very limited edition iPad Dodocase from us. That way you can either spend more cash on that evening’s festivities or buy Dead Space 2. You’re call. We’re just here to hand out prizes.
Of… → Read More
Earlier I wrote about an interesting new wave of companies trying to one-up LinkedIn, by using recommendation engines to help navigate your professional life. While LinkedIn made sense of your off-line social graph and how it intersects with friends’ social graphs, these new companies are essentially trying to rank your social graph and let you use that information to get ahead. Earlier I wrote… → Read More
The airpenPocket is Pentel’s update to the aging airpenMini. Coming out in mid-February, this digital pen can transmit handwriting data via Bluetooth. The airpenMini was only able to export the data over USB. When writing or drawing, on paper sizes up to A4, the information is sent to a memory unit with the original ultrasonic infrared method. The memory unit is the middle man between the pen and… → Read More
Just last week, Dutch retailer ThePhoneHouse jumped the gun and put up a listing for the thus-far unannounced LG Optimus 3D. The bad news? Outside of the name (specifically, the “3D” bit in the name), there wasn’t much to be learned — they didn’t put up specs, and they didn’t put up any pictures.
Of course, a leaked name is often enough to get the leak-train rollin’ — and a-rollin’ it is. See… → Read More
Back in October of last year, news started to trickle out that Facebook was completely revamping their commenting system plugin. The very thought had to send a chill down the spine of commenting startups like Disqus, Echo, and Livefyre. In a statement to us at the time, Facebook confirmed the upgrades, and vaguely said, “we’ll have more to share in the coming weeks.” Well, weeks turned to months… → Read More
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Berlin, Germany
San Francisco
