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 sites its users have marked as a source of web spam will now be blocked (see full list below).
Concerns are rising that spam is increasingly taking over search results. So much so that Google recently vowed to become more vigilant and downgrade content farms specifically in search rankings. → 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 sell content via In-App purchases:
The company has told some applications developers, including Sony, that they can no longer sell content, like e-books, within their apps, or let customers have access to purchases they have made outside the App Store.
Apple rejected Sony’s iPhone application, which would have let people buy and read e-books bought from the Sony Reader Store.
Apple told Sony that from now on, all in-app purchases would have to go through Apple, said Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading division.
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 with a video to help spread the word virally. People can invest $10, $100, $1,000 or more, and in return instead of getting shares in the company, they get a promised percentage of revenues for a specified period of time like 5 percent of revenues for three years. → 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 say that this is a strong showing for Dell and does just enough to stand out from the current tablet crowd. → 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 property is available, thus preventing inaccuracies. It gives brokers “one-click syndication” or the ability to automatically post properties to consumer real estate sites like Craigslist, Trulia and Zillow. RentJuice also offers premium accounts where users can upgrade to features that automate administrative work like lead gen, advertising and paperwork. → 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 commercial where they excoritated IBM for being controlling. → 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 strategy for international expansion.”
In addition, StrikeAd has announced its new advisory board, which includes ex-CEO of Qype, Stephen Taylor (also formerly of Overture and Yahoo Europe), and Reza Behnam, previously a partner at IDG Ventures and the founder of online ad buying platform ADZ. → 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 comes in.
The service has actually been around for four years, but it was originally marketed exclusively toward people on dating sites. The use case is obvious: instead of handing out your real phone number to strangers, Vumber lets you spin up a new phone number, which you then redirect to your real phone. Then, when your date reveals that he hates animals and has lived in his mother’s basement for a decade, you can simply deactivate the number. Around 30-40% of the service still caters to online dating, but Vumber can be used for other things. → 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 mobile company is no small event. The numbers don’t seem to include tablets, though it recently transpired that even the top-selling Android tablet sales were, to quote Samsung, “quite small.” We won’t see the Honeycomb effect until later in 2011. But it seems as though Android still has nowhere to go but up — that is, if you consider downmarket “up.” → 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 step-by-step, but it will feel so much better if you construct it yourself. At least that’s what my mom used to tell me. → 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, bringing his own user survey, a funny video aimed at today’s Chatter launch, and some fighting words.
All are below. → 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 he’s a big WWII buff. He purchased and restored a M18 Hellcat Tank Destroyer. You can see the restoration process here (he keeps it in his garage). And here’s a video of his wife blowing the crap out of the side of a gravel pit. → 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 over 15 countries worldwide. Waldorf has previously worked with Accel on the board of real estate startup Trulia. → 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 slippery nature, which causes them to slide about and become separated.
I would have thought Apple would foresee this and install powerful magnets in that round bit of the casing, so they’d stick together, but they didn’t, so it’s left to the ever-inventive fans to justify their purchase with a home-brewed accessory. → 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. The result is that it’s as easy to print 3D models as it is to print old-fashioned photographs or related 2D-printed merchandise such as t-shirts, mugs or mouse-mats and the like. Here’s how it works: → Read More
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