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 small,” you better believe those sales are microscopic. → 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 share their collections with friends. In fact, Bump — an app that makes it easy to swap contact information, music, and other data between mobile devices — says that users have been asking for an easy way to share lists of their favorite apps for ages, and that it’s the second most popular request overall (behind music sharing, which has already been implemented). Today, all of those users are getting their wish granted. → 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 ago, suing everybody under the sun in order to scare people into no longer illegally downloading their content. This should be fun for everyone. → 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 online, “noor.net shut all except NTG, the National Technology Group providing IT processing to the aviation, banking and financial sectors.” The ISP’s website itself is offline. → 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 course you can save yourself some agony and simply buy the case, although Dodocase is only going to make 40 of them and they’ll probably go fast even at $75. Just like their other iPad cases, this one is hand-made from San Francisco artisans trained in the art of book binding. Greg even professed in his Dodocase review that “this case could probably get you laid” which may or may not carry over to this edition that features a lovely golden heart on its spine.
Click through for the instructions and rules. → 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 about Mixtent, which is trying to solve inefficiencies in the labor market. Another site launching tomorrow at the Founder Institute’s Founder Showcase is LetsLunch.
LetsLunch tackles another awkward and inefficient necessity of the business world: Networking. → 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 PC. → 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 that Droid X-lookin’ thing over there? That is, according to the good ol’ rumor mill, none other than the Optimus 3D. → 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 — nothing. But that may be about to change.
Facebook is on the verge of launching a full commenting system for third-party sites, CNET’s Caroline McCarthy reports today. She cites multiple sources who claim the product should be ready to roll out in a matter of weeks. And apparently it could be implemented at launch on a number of high-profile sites (no, not us — unless AOL has us totally out of the loop on this one). → Read More
Lateral, the pan-European software development company, has signed a three year deal with NASDAQ-listed Travelzoo to becomes its “technology Solutions provider”.
Prior to today’s announcement, the two companies had already been working together with Lateral powering Travelzoo’s attempt at getting into the daily deals space with its own Groupon-clone. The newly formed partnership will also see Lateral’s co-founder and CEO Ciprian Morar serve as Vice President, Innovation at Travelzoo reporting to its CEO, Chris Loughlin. → Read More
Last I night I had the good fortune to see Mike Daisey’s highly acclaimed show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs at the Berkeley Repertory Theater. It’s both an entertaining and acutely moving performance that anyone who owns an Apple product has a moral duty to see.
Daisey is not only a brilliant monologist in the tradition of Michael Moore and Spalding Gray, but he’s also a crusading journalist who has exposed the inhumane working conditions of the workers at the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China. Daisey went to Shenzhen and stood outside the monstrous Foxconn factory and interviewed its workers – some as young as 12 years old – about the inhumane working conditions there. This is what he found…
Video ahead. → Read More
All great CEOs have presentation secrets. Apple CEO Steve Jobs says “boom!” a lot — and other superlatives. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer loves to repeat certain words three times — often while clapping his hands. But what about departing Google CEO Eric Schmidt? What’s his secret?
It’s the use of the word “literally”, literally. → Read More
Canvas launches today for 4,000 or so lucky souls.
Seven year old 4chan, created by now-23 year old Christopher Poole, continues to delight and enrage the Internet. Major Internet memes were either created or spread on 4Chan, as were more denial of service attacks than we can count. Twelve million or so people a month visit the site, and at any given moment there are 60,000 – 70,000 people on 4chan.
4chan’s success, says Poole, is based on three things. Real time collaboration as visitors riff back and forth about posted items, often pictures. A true shared experience as an item pops up on 4chan and then eventually falls off the board (there are no archives). And fluid identity – to add content on 4chan all you have to do is write something, upload a file and complete a captcha. There are no user accounts.
But 4chan isn’t Poole’s ultimate goal. He’s taken what works there, changed other things, and created something wholly new – Canvas. → Read More
Social CRM startup Silentale used to be called the “Dropbox of communication.” It used to compete with the likes of Xobni, Gist and Rapportive. But those days are over. Starting today, Silentale will be ending its former contact management service and rolling out SocialReplay, a B2B social backup solution.
Last week, Silentale’s founder, Laurent Féral-Pierssens, announced the change in strategy on the company’s website (below). In short, starting today, Silentale will no longer update user accounts and all free accounts will be erased on February 14th. For anyone with a Pro or Pro Plus account, their information will be stored for an additional 60 days after the February 14th extermination date. Anyone who wants to get ahold of their data should contact Silentale’s team. → Read More
I think it’s a safe bet that the majority of readers do not experience life in the sort of way that would require HeadBanger earphones. Sure, I guess someone out there might enjoy a bit of parkour. Perhaps a few of you might even breakdance like the chap in the pic above. After all, we did see over 25 million unique readers last year so chances are not everyone is strapped to a desk like me. So for those seven extreme readers, this one is for you. (and everyone else who’s living in a dream) → Read More
AOL Europe has lead an acquision of video distribution network Goviral today, to the tune of $96.7 million. Goviral distributes branded video content for mainstream brands, as well as content producers and advertising agencies. Originally out of Copenhagen, the company now has offices across Europe. The initial purchase is for $74.1 million and $22.6 million in a two year earn out. It joins others AOL acquisitions in the last year including, StudioNow, 5min Media, Thing Labs, Pictela, about.me and, er, TechCrunch.
We’re hearing this deal was lead directly by Kate Burns, SVP, AOL Europe. René Rechtman, CEO, goviral secured $8.82 million Series A funding from European VC Kennet Partners in 2009. → Read More
The success of JDate, an online dating service aimed towards matching Jewish singles, has proven dating sites for niche religious or cultural groups can actually work. Today, 2RedBeans, a graduate of the Founder Institute, has launched a dating site exclusively focused on matching Chinese-Americans.
The site has a slightly different twist from most dating sites—2RedBeans tries to match singles in accordance with Chinese cultural values. For example, the site’s matchmaking algorithm places special emphasis on unique characteristics that are possibly relevant to the Chinese; such as date of immigration, and highest level of education. → Read More
There is something amiss in the European media and I fear it’s going to start confusing the hell out of people. At the press conference for the launch of Facebook Places Deals in Europe, several questions from the amassed press corp indicated that one or two either thought the Deals offers were the same as Groupon flash offers, or that they would turn into Groupon style offers.
Now, I really don’t think my esteemed colleagues in the media are wilfully making this mistake. But in the excitement of a new launch, and the repeated denials of Facebook people like Joanna Shields (head of Europe) that this was Groupon-u-like, it feels like this is a great angle to go with. The trouble is – it’s wrong. If anything Facebook Deals will almost certainly kill off the ability of Foursquare to scale in Europe now – not Groupon. Facebook has boots on the ground in Europe. It has a ridiculously powerful team in Shields and partnerships chief Christian Hernandez, and they are doing deals with major partners like Starbucks like there is no tomorrow. → Read More
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